Songs of Love & Hate or: Alas A Cornucopia of Love
by amor-remanet
Summary: How do you get a stubborn angel and an equally stubborn hunter back together and off your back? Gabriel doesn't know, but he's determined to do it... regardless of the other circumstances. GO SEE THE ART ON LJ: bit.ly/9pyCAL
1. How I'm Supposed To Breathe With No Air

Castiel had not given any thought as to what he would do if, by some miracle, he were to survive the Apocalypse, let alone become an archangel. Mostly, he gave no thought to these things because they were ludicrous suggestions, at best. However, if he had, his ideal notion of surviving the Apocalypse would have gone like this:

Still mortal and inhabiting Jimmy Novak's body without his host's soul, Castiel would have climbed into the Impala with Bobby Singer and the Winchesters. Both of the brothers would have come through the debacle of imprisoning Lucifer with minimal damage, Bobby would have pronounced them all the most reckless idiots he'd ever known (with his customary mispronunciation of "idiot" as "idjit"), and when all four eventually stopped on the drive from Lawrence to Sioux Falls, Castiel would have requested a separate room for himself and Dean, with only one bed. He would have closed the door, and then the curtains, and then the distance between himself and Dean. Deeply and without hesitation, he would have kissed Dean, tasted in his mouth whatever lingered of the bacon cheeseburger and the beer they would've had while driving because there weren't any cops on the road. Dean's shirt would have hit the floor; Castiel's hands would have hit Dean's skin, ghosted over the tension in his muscles, and caressed his map of scars and bruises. His shirt would not have joined Dean's until they'd already dragged each other down to the mattress.

But those were just impossibilities, Castiel figured in what he thought was an entirely reasonable fashion. The incredibly likely event of his death had occurred to him several times over; coming back from it — again — with his angelic powers put back into their proper place had not. Idealism unfettered by practicality had never appealed to Castiel, and that his essence regained consciousness and reappeared on Earth left him briefly speechless. He'd been spared death once before. Only in his most fanciful, irrational dreams had he thought he could come back again, and dreams, in Castiel's experience, were detestable things that never became reality without some atrocious consequence attached.

What Castiel didn't know was that, despite all appearances to the contrary, his Father actually rather liked dreams. He just liked to make His children learn something when they came true. And, generally, He meant something more than what Death thought of Dean Winchester.

Castiel's first action as an archangel was not to thank his Heavenly Father for giving him another chance at life — not to mention restoring him to Jimmy's body, to which he had formed an attachment, even as his vessel's soul had returned to Heaven — or, indeed, to do anything particularly angelic. True, he healed the wounds Lucifer had given Dean Winchester and subsequently brought Bobby Singer back to life, but at the time, Castiel was not yet certain that "new and improved" meant the promotion that it did. As far as he could tell, it had only meant that his previous angelic abilities had been given back to him.

Castiel wished that his first action as an archangel could have been kissing Dean deeply, passionately, or taking him to a motel bed and making him understand what they'd just given everything to save, or simply being around him without feeling the aura of pain that followed Dean everywhere. Some of it, Castiel could have understood — after all, Dean's most constant companion had just sacrificed himself and their other brother in order to put Lucifer away — but hadn't he made his own sacrifices for the sake of Dean's cause? He'd started moving on; it couldn't have been so hard for Dean to do the same, he thought. But none of these thoughts or desires came to concrete acts.

Rather, Castiel's first action as an archangel, and with suspicions of his new condition in mind, was to get into the passenger side seat of Dean Winchester's Chevy Impala.

He left the Impala not long after entering it, but he did not, as Dean thought and as he had implied, immediately return to Heaven. Anarchy would have run rampant in the ranks without Michael, Castiel knew, but there were important things on Earth. Castiel followed his lover, his human charge, all the way to the home of Lisa Braeden and her young son, Ben.

Lingering where he couldn't be seen, Castiel watched as she let Dean into the house and he knew the truths that Dean and Lisa kept from each other. He knew that Ben was Dean's biological son, and that Lisa cared for Dean deeply, but didn't know if she could be in love with him, or if his penchant for walking the earth to hunt things would negatively impact Ben, or if the sex would be worth attempting a relationship. Likewise, Dean had no idea if he was in love with Lisa or not, and to leave his wandering days behind him seemed an impossible task, comparable to excising an entire part of who he was, but Sam had gone to Hell with a promise from his brother, one Dean would let no one keep him from honoring.

As he watched Dean cracking open a beer with Lisa, Castiel felt as though his chest might collapse in on itself, as though it had gotten simultaneously tighter and heavier. Keeping his head up seemed too difficult; he found himself looking at the grass between his feet, but he didn't shed a tear. Memories of his time on earth flooded him — all the arguments he and Dean had put each other through; the burning intensity every time Dean had fixed his eyes on Castiel; the chapped feeling of Dean's lips when they kissed; the gentle way that Dean's hands — so rough themselves — ghosted over, then caressed, Castiel's cheek; the night before they'd trapped Raphael, when Dean had made love to him for the first time, when Castiel had subsequently pinned and fucked Dean on the same motel bed, prompting him to say, "God, you learn fast" …

But for all they came back to him now, and for all the half-mad impulses they created in him, Castiel couldn't bring himself to move. He simply watched. Dean put his hand on Lisa's cheek; Castiel's breath hitched and he coughed to try and get it back. He knew that touch, he'd felt it — and though it belonged to another now, Castiel kept watching. Lisa took Dean's wrist as if to ask for some discretion, and, for a moment, they locked eyes. Human mating rituals no longer confused Castiel, but he couldn't ignore the hesitance between them, the questions Dean and Lisa decided not to ask before they'd even fully formed the things. They kissed as though declaring war. Something sharp shot through Castiel's chest. Tightening his hands into fists, Castiel spread his wings and returned Home.

He was happy for Dean, he told himself on his way back Up. Dean had a family now, one who wouldn't leave him the way that Sam and John had done so many times before; he'd gotten the world that he wanted, and now, he could have baseball games and picnics in the park with Lisa; he could coach Ben's little league team, relish in the power that the whistle gave him over the other children, and be the father to his son that John had never been to him.

Castiel was happy for Dean — he should have been, anyway… but the smile that he forced came up like a grimace, one hacked on his face with a blunt and rusted knife. Thinking about Lisa, about Dean, about Dean with Lisa, about wishing them the best because hating them was for sore losers… It all made something inside the angel's chest burn with a wildfire's intensity.

During his ascent, Castiel looked back only once. Even while making love to Lisa, Dean sweated loneliness, radiated pain, and stunk of that same insane refusal to let anybody help. Castiel turned his eyes back to Heaven and to the resounding clangs of revolution. For millennia, he'd always been a soldier. Even Dean Winchester, it seemed, and whatever it was they'd shared, could not make Castiel a lover.

"…Chuck?"

Although, out of reverence, he'd tried to keep his voice down, Castiel took note of how loud he seemed and how a nearby branch shook when he spoke. At the moment, only one other being — Chuck Shurley, as far as Castiel could see — drew breath in The Garden and the sounds of swords on swords, of brothers and sisters fighting each other, couldn't penetrate the holy silence. Furrowing his brow in confusion earned Castiel no response from the other one. In silence, Castiel stared down the path at the short, scruffy little figure; He said nothing, but smiled back inscrutably, running a thumb down the petals of an azalea.

As Castiel walked toward Him, his convictions wavered — the now familiar feeling of doubt made his steps faster, then slower, for properly discerning who stood before him could have disappointed. Everything looked like Chuck as Castiel remembered him: he'd not shaved for some time or thought to dress that much, and the decrepit green bathrobe brushed around his ankles, but drawing closer to him, though, made him seem less and less like the hapless prophet. For one thing, his smile seemed too even and too certain, and for another, some unfamiliar, pleasant surprise played in the light of his blue eyes. Even as Castiel came closer, He didn't look up again, but only continued examining Joshua's handiwork — the tree beside him, the vines that dangled from it, the dandelion that stuck out of the path at an odd angle, then back to the azalea he'd fingered earlier — and looking on it all with unfathomable love.

Castiel paused by a tangled nest of roses, keeping enough distance between himself and Him, so as not to disrespect. He bowed his head, averted his eyes. He felt his face growing hot, but he couldn't place what was causing it — embarrassment? Shame? Or something different? None of them made sense. All of Castiel's certainty focused on one fact: that kind of love could only have come from one Being and even when there came no retribution, Castiel did not look back up at Him. "Father, I — forgive me, Father," Castiel said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I just assumed… because of Your—"

"I know," He said with a shrug and an off-kilter smile that looked more at place on His current visage. "I mean, I could do the big light show for you, but I thought Chuck here might be easier for you to have a chat with." Castiel nodded, but he didn't look up to see the confusion he was earning in his Creator. "…You can look at Me, you know," He clarified. "I'm not going to destroy you or anything — I reward My children for their faith."

Slowly, Castiel raised his eyes from the ground. Warmth flooded him as he met his Father's gaze. "You mean for me to take over leadership of the angels," he asked with no uncertainty in his voice.

He hesitated, and stumbled over saying: "Well, I actually… I — I sort of had it in mind to, well. …What do you want, Castiel?" Castiel tilted his head and furrowed his brow; He sighed. "You've been so good, Castiel, and so, so diligent, and loyal — I mean, I know I told you all to love mankind, but you went so far above and beyond, and for ages, it's just been following someone else's orders for you, so… what do you want? Any one thing, whatever you want, I'll give it to you."

Castiel paused. He thought of Dean, and of the possibility of going back to him. He thought of how Dean's entire face lit up when he smiled, and how one could read his thoughts in the exact curve of his frowns, and how, infuriatingly, he never would believe that his life had been worth rescuing from Hell. Castiel opened his mouth to speak — to ask to be Dean's lover once again — but then he thought of Lisa.

"I want to serve You, Father," he murmured, once more looking at the ground. "Wholly, and without distraction."

God sighed, and shuffled His feet. He pulled a sword out from inside His robe and held it toward Castiel. "This was Michael's," He explained. "I know you'll use it well."

As Castiel wrapped his fingers around the hilt, he felt his stomach churn — but that reaction, he knew, was pointless and could only be ignored. Even if he couldn't hear it here, the battle still raged in the rest of Heaven. Someone needed to stop it. And that someone had to be Castiel.


	2. But When We Are Apart, I Feel It Too

The sound of hostilities had long subsided when Castiel looked down to the earth again. As he stormed off of the battlefield, he made no move to clean off the blood that stained his front, his neck, his face, hands, and sword alike; the crimson splatters stood stark against his pale skin and the white shirt of Jimmy's that he'd never bothered changing. Shoulders hunched and fingers clenched on his blade's hilt, Castiel ascended a clump of cumulonimbus clouds, up to the place where Michael had sat as supreme archangel — and Castiel knew now that his Father had seen fit to change him, no doubt to give him the power of authority in Heaven. In the silence, he closed his eyes and extended his wings; for the first time, he truly felt the presence of eight of them, where he'd had only two before. The new ones creaked, the joints still too accustomed to nonexistence to be particularly useful. Castiel shook them out, sending loose feathers tumbling to the ground.

Idly, he let his eyes trail after one as it plummeted. Over and over it turned, showing first one long, white side, then the other, lazily drifting down toward the modest little house where Castiel had left Dean on his own. Although Castiel tried to tell himself not to look, that Dean had made his choices, that the life he wanted did not include the angel who had given up everything for him and that the only reasonable option was to leave Dean to it, he couldn't stave off the temptation. The feather landed in the backyard, at Ben Braeden's feet, distracting him from everything else; he looked around and wandered to a nearby thicket of trees, calling out for the birds who might have lost something. Inside, however, Dean clenched his fingers around another bottle of beer. He brooded; Castiel could hear the need and the ruminations from his post. Lisa entered the kitchen; they raised their voices. Castiel turned away.

Again, for the first time in too long, he knew what he needed to do. After so long without it, certainty slipped onto him like an old sweater that didn't fit right anymore. But he knew what he needed to do.

Consciousness is a funny thing, for angels. Technically speaking, as beings comprised entirely of Grace, they can't die in the same way that humans can. Instead, when they should perish, they end up in a realm crafted specifically to hold them until such time as someone resurrects them, or they decide to permanently remove their essence from existence. This place, a Limbo between the different layers of Heaven, has very little of note — whiteness everywhere, without adornment or props or a stable sense of the movement of time, and the only companions who ever come in are the other angels. Most of them choose to die fairly quickly, figuring that, had their Father's Will been different, they would never have come here.

Only two angels refused to give up the hope of living again, and by the time Castiel descended the stairs toward them, the first living angel to enter Limbo in millennia, they had all but run out of ways to make each other miserable.

Zachariah had shown up in Limbo first, immediately after Dean had killed him, and when the littlest archangel popped into what he'd come to consider his space, he couldn't just ignore it: "Well, well, well — I guess running away wasn't going to keep you from dying like a real angel."

"Shut your fat cake-hole," Gabriel had snapped. "At least I didn't get iced by Thing One — I mean, Dean? Seriously, Zach? He's practically a Neanderthal, and dumber than a box of rocks. How'd he manage to get your guard down like that — point out an unmarried, interracial gay couple desecrating a church and giving out free abortions?"

"You should show me some respect." Anger had never been a foreign concept to Zachariah, but feeling actual rage bubble up instead of righteous indignation left him feeling so... flawed. For Gabriel, he'd decided, though — for Gabriel, he could make an exception. "I stayed in my place. I fought. You're what? Some piss-poor, cowardly excuse of an archangel, who joined up with the Pagans because his brothers couldn't decide who got the ice cream first?"

"You shut up about my brothers, you selfish, arrogant, sanctimonious dick."

And so on. And so on. And so on. Ad nauseam — Gabriel and Zachariah carried on for long enough that, even if they had been able to feel time moving around them, the two of them would have lost count of how many days had passed. After a while, Gabriel gave up on insults and took to fooling around with reality and Zachariah's perception of it. Here, he'd put up the illusion of a perfect little servant/receptionist, just like Zach had always wanted, and take it away just as Zachariah had gotten used to the idea of having someone do his bidding for him once again. There, he'd toss up images of Sam's, Dean's, and Castiel's bloody corpses, only to have them stand again and terrorize the senior paper-pusher.

Zachariah knew that, for the most part, he was powerless to actually fight back against an archangel (even one as pathetic as Gabriel). So, instead, he stuck to what he knew best: "So, tell me really. You were just pulling that Mystery Spot gag with Sam so you could sleep with him repeatedly and no one would know the difference, right?"

For that jab, Gabriel dropped onto Zach's head the hand-crafted appearance of a road-killed raccoon that had been out in the summer sun for far too long.

Sometimes, they tried to just ignore each other, but the silence, they found, was even worse than the company they'd gotten stuck with. As soon as it wandered in and settled down, it started gnawing at their nerves, making them twitch. Just a bit at first, but eventually, one or the other either said something or collapsed in convulsions on the floor, and trying to wait until the other seized up inevitably ended in the attempted patient one falling over first. When the battle for Heaven happened, several of their brothers and sisters joined them — but none of them hung around for long before they disappeared with a series of little pops.

On the day they were to be freed from Limbo, Gabriel had given up on breaking the other angel's spirit and, instead, turned to searching for a way to get out of this crap-hole. He glanced up the wall of clouds, staring into a fathomless white abyss, and with a pensive hum, he made a set of foot-holds materialize on it. Gabriel smirked, and rubbed his hands together in preparation. With a self-satisfied huff, Gabriel started climbing. Looking up at his companion (for, regrettably, Zachariah couldn't think of a better term for Gabriel, at this point), Zachariah sighed. "That's not going to work," he pointed out — and reasonably so as, not five seconds later, Gabriel crashed back into the floor. "I told you so."

Sitting up and facing his brother, Gabriel glared and wrinkled his nose as though he'd caught a whiff of a real sun-baked road-kill raccoon. "Well excuse me for not just sitting on my ass like you, Negative Nancy."

Optimism had long since proven its unreliability, in Zachariah's experience. As he looked into the archangel's eyes, a thought occurred: "They're just going to forget us here, you know. It's either die, or be stuck with each other. For eternity."

Gabriel paused, and considered this for a moment. "Given that choice, I'd say that suicide almost sounded worth it. …But seriously, Zach. You're not getting rid of me thateasily."

Zachariah shrugged. "It's not like we had to try that hard before you ran off to Scandinavia." Rather than respond to that, and despite the now familiar sensation of needing to make mischief right the fuck now, Gabriel allowed the silence to worm its way in between them; Zachariah broke it before either of them could have a fit. "…So what do we do with each other for the rest of time, Gabriel? I mean… I don't like you. You don't like me. And I don't think anyone else is going to be dying very soon."

This needed a moment's actual thought, but Gabriel concluded: "Well, I guess we could make out."

Sexuality, in Zachariah's estimation, had always seemed so base, so… human — and, as it was a human endeavor, he wanted to stay as far away from it as he possibly could. Before he had the chance to think about the offer, Zachariah found Gabriel straddling his lap and kissing him. It was new — not bad, especially, but the wet feeling of their mouths colliding seemed so odd. Cooperating, however, was most likely the better option, and yielding to the warmth between them, Zachariah kissed back, moving his lips against Gabriel's and trying not to think about it too much when Gabriel's tongue ran along his own.

Castiel had expected to find many things in Limbo, but the sight of two of his brothers enmeshed in each other like this had not entered his mind at all. The hungry way that Gabriel went after Zachariah's mouth looked too much reminiscent of Dean — Castiel cleared his throat without regard for how his brothers felt. They startled, and separated; Zachariah flung Gabriel backwards off of his chest, and Gabriel scuttled even further away from him. Both of them blushed scarlet.

"H-hey, bro," Gabriel stammered. "I… didn't you go and pull out some serious, self-sacrificing badass shit in Van Nuys?"

Castiel's expression did not change. "Yes."

"So what are you doing—"

"The two of you," Castiel explained, "are coming with me." With his mind alone, he moved the two of them to within an arm's reach. Frowning, he set his hands on the tops of their heads. "I have very important work for you."

"Come on, Sam."

The palace of Pandemonium stood at the center of a blighted field, a black monument right in the middle of Hell. Darkness surrounded it, so pitch-dark that everything else looked light. Inside it, on an onyx throne, sat Sam Winchester, who hadn't stopped looking pale since he'd shown up here; at his left-hand sat Bela Talbot, resting on the chair's arm and setting her head on his shoulder. Crowley — the one who had, with some crafty magic, separated Sam from Lucifer in the first place — stood off to the right. Neither of them wore particularly pleased expressions.

Gabriel appeared on the field with a scowl and a flutter of wings. He gave the place a once over and thought of ten good reasons why he should have just gone back to Heaven and told Castiel to go suck Dean's cock. Why, of all the things, did his first duty upon having his life restored to him have to involve raising Sam Winchester from Hell? Dry, blasted dirt crumbled under his feet as he approached Pandemonium, and, against all of his expectations, no demons showed up to try and make his life even more like Hell that being in the Hot Box already made it. Gabriel sighed, and thought a quick Thanks, Dad; if He'd gotten nothing else right, then at least he'd made this one job a little easier.

Unfortunately for Gabriel, his left shoulder and three of his wings still ached from the last time he'd told Castiel to do anything involving Dean's cock, and if the choice came down to having his wings torched off as Castiel had threatened or running this inane errand, Gabriel had to go with the path that didn't end with him in outrageous pain.

As far as appearances went, Bela's hadn't changed too terribly much during her eons in Hell. From far enough away, her skin looked just as smooth, but up close, the twisted map of scars revealed itself. Golden-brown hair still fell to the middle of her back, but the knots and twists to it looked serpentine; an unexpected sympathy lurked under her glowing red eyes. Crowley had knotted skin the color of a sun-bleached bone, the same red eyes, and a mess of tangled black hair. With a pensive sigh, Bela laid her hand on Sam's wrist.

"It's not all that bad down here, is it?" she asked softly. "We are trying to make you comfortable."

"Yeah, why is that, exactly?" Sam didn't mean to snap at her; even if she'd tried to kill him before, that was long past where they were now, and she wasn't directly responsible for him being in Hell. Besides, she was right: so far, no one had chained him to the rack, or made him watch some soul being tortured. The worst thing he'd encountered had been Crowley's pet Hell-hound, who mostly disconcerted Sam by virtue of the fact that he looked like an approximately horse-sized Rottweiler. Even so, Sam's stormy expression showed her no friendliness. "If I wanted to, I could waste all of you."

"And what would that get you, exactly?" Crowley asked with the aggrieved sigh of someone who had been thrust once more into a conversation he'd attempted to beat to death already. "We need our leader, Sam — preferably one who's not going to run around trying to raise Lucifer from his cage again like those God-forsaken morons, Lilith and Azazel."

"And Ruby," Bela chimed in, glancing up at her boss from Sam's shoulder. "And Alastair."

Sam's frown deepened; his glare steeled; his lips curled into a tight frown. "I told you not to bring up Ruby."

"Yes, we know," Crowley drawled. "The mean, mean demon gave you some of the best sex of your young life, used you to break Lucifer out, and got you addicted to her delicious blood in the process — can we just let the past go already?"

Sam turned his eyes to Crowley and sighed. "Not really. I'd say it's kind of a big reason why I'm not really jumping at the bit to lead you guys."

Warding magic around the palace made it so that, within a certain distance, Gabriel could only fly so high, effectively ending his attempts at an aerial assault with one archangel falling on his ass. As far as he could see, the choices for getting into Pandemonium came down to two options: trying to scale the cool, slick walls (which, as part of Hell and made from the darkness and chaos, were beyond his ability to manipulate) and tipping off the two guards by the gate. He huffed and glanced skyward, trying to think of all the choice words he could give his Father, the next time he got a face-to-face. So much for this being easy.

Rolling his eyes, he strolled right up to the black-eyed sons of bitches who stood between him and his mark. "Hey, boys," he said. "Whose toes do you have to suck to get an audience with King Sammy?"

"Sam, honestly," Crowley said, keeping his tone even as he sat on the throne's right arm. "We can all agree that this isn't an ideal situation — Bela, darling, would you call this anything even remotely resembling an ideal situation?" Bela shook her head and murmured a no. "But what do we do with less-than-ideal situations? …We make the best out of them."

"Well, excuse me for not seeing how I'm supposed to make the best out of being your leader." Sam wished, desperately, that he had died before he'd come down here. For all his previous deaths hadn't lasted long enough for him to really get a feel for what it was like, not having to deal with the way his lungs twisted right now would have, he thought, improved the situation considerably.

"We understand you're upset," Bela told him, wrapping her fingers in with his. "But it is for the best, you know. We want to take Hell in a different direction. No more Apocalypse business, just your standard deals. The occasional possession or two. Working with the hunters to control other monster populations—"

The sound of flapping wings and the feeling of plummeting onto the seat cut Bela off; she and Crowley stared at the doorway, at the little figure who now had Sam in his arms. Gabriel only smirked. "You guys need some better guards. It's like those boys have never seen an archangel before."

Gabriel dropped Sam on the street outside of Lisa Braeden's house, just as she, Dean, and Ben were sitting down to dinner. Briefly, he considered hanging around to answer questions — where am I now, what did you do to me, what's going to happen to Dean, whatever else was kicking around Sam's enormous Cro-Magnon skull — but a far off flash of lightning served as a warning. In the roll of thunder, he could practically hear Castiel telling him to hurry up and get back home. As he spread his wings and flew back up to Heaven, Gabriel wondered what his little brother had gone and dreamt up this time.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Brow knotted and expression grave, Castiel looked up from the papers he'd set himself about organising. "No, Gabriel. I am not kidding you."

Gabriel's shoulders slumped, and he put his hands on his hips. "You know, little brother? Last I checked, I was the archangel between the two of us, and you can, 'Our Father gave me a special mission, blah, blah, blah' me all you want, but you know what? ...I am nobody's bitch. Not yours, not Dad's, not anybody's."

Something seemed to burn behind Castiel's blue eyes, but he said nothing in response.

"I just got back from Hell, Cas," Gabriel continued, snapping like a viper at a human's ankle. "You wanted Sam Winchester raised, so I went and I raised him, but you cannot make me do this."

The silence smoldered between them — and provided a long enough distraction for Castiel to pin Gabriel to the wall. "You're the angel of annunciation, Gabriel," he hissed. Tightening his hold on the archangel's arms, Castiel pushed him harder into the cold surface. "Now go announce."

"Okay, okay! Fine!" Gabriel heaved a sigh of relief as Castiel finally let him go. "…Jeez, bro. I get it that Dean broke your heart, but can't you just go drink the pain away like everybody else?"

Castiel's expression darkened. "I'm fine. Get going."

Becky Rosen's heart hadn't stopped racing since she'd looked at the pregnancy test results, though it had calmed down some. It made sense, she guessed, in that it explained why her boobs hurt and why her she was Late-late, but… she and Chuck hadn't… and she hadn't been with anybody else… Becky paled and looked around her tiny mess of a home, left to her in Chuck's will after he'd mysteriously disappeared and died three weeks previously, along with the money he was supposed to get for publishing all theSupernatural books that were still on his hard drive. She couldn't raise a baby here. She couldn't raise a baby anywhere, not unless she moved back in with her parents, and she couldn't do that…

Pale and trembling, hugging herself around the middle, Becky sat down on the ratty sofa. In her hip pocket, she had a Post-It note with the number of a Planned Parenthood location a few towns over — but what would they say when she showed up there and insisted that she'd never had sex, because she hadn't? She didn't notice the sound of rustling feathers, or the presence of someone else sitting next to her until he said, "Hey, Becky."

Her eyes doubled in size and she scooted down the sofa. "Who… who are you?" she spluttered. "Where did you come from? What are you doing here? …Are you going to rape me?"

"Oh, please," Gabriel huffed, rolling his eyes. "Sweetheart, I'm not interested in you like that. This visit is more like… How about we just call it family business and have that be that."

Wrinkling her nose like an irritated kitten and curling her lips as though deep in thought, Becky shot him a suspicious look. "Are you a demon? …How did you get past the wards? Mister Singer did those himself and…" Gabriel spread his wings; Becky stared up at them in awe. She gaped in silence for a minute before whispering, "Oh my God, you're an angel. …Do you know Castiel? …Is it true that he's in love with Dean or did Chuck make that up, because I've kind of wondered how much of the story he embellished a little and how much—"

"I'm not here to talk to you about Castiel or Dean, okay?" Gabriel held a hand up to keep Becky from interrupting him in return; his expression serious, he pointed at her stomach. "That baby inside you? …It's Chuck's baby — well. Not Chuck's baby, more God's baby. But you met my Dad while He was down here as Chuck, so… for all intents and purposes, you're having Chuck's baby."

"But he and I never—"

"I know. You're a virgin." Gabriel cocked his head and smirked. "This isn't the first time I've had to make this visit." Becky shivered, looking at the floor between her knees and hugging herself tighter; she didn't register Gabriel reaching into her pocket for the Planned Parenthood number until he held it up. "You won't be needing this," he explained. "Your baby's got a world of work ahead of her."

In a flurry of beating wings, Gabriel left her on the sofa. Becky sat there in silence for a moment, before emitting a high-pitched whine. What was she going to do? She couldn't do this by herself… She went to the desk and dug Chuck's cellphone out of the top drawer. Her lips quivered as she plugged it into the charger. As soon as it turned on, she dialled the number of the person she knew who had the best chance of helping.

"…Hello?" he hazarded. Between the relief of hearing him and the stress of everything else, her eyes started misting over with tears.

"Sam?" She hated how her voice sounded right now, so incompetent and anxious. She just wanted this to not be happening. "It's Becky…"

From the Desk of Castiel, Archangel.

3rd Tammuz, 5770 (15th June, 2010 by mortal "civil" reckoning).

Brothers and Sisters,

Today, we celebrate two of the great miracles that Our Father gave to human beings as a reward for their faith in him: the flowering of Aaron's staff to show his right to the high priesthood of Israel, and the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua, Moses's student and not our heavenly brother. I believe that these stories share an important lesson about the nature of faith and its proper handling, one that many of us need to learn again. Put briefly: faith uplifts and it brings us closer to our Creator, for whose faith is greater than the Lord's? Who else has believed so steadfastly that all would transpire as it should?

However, as some of you have heard me say before, our plight during these past few years does call our policies of faith into question. I do not intend, brothers and sisters, to tell you not to put your trust in Our Father and in His Ineffable Plan; on the contrary, if you are to have faith in anything, I would have you put it in Him first, humanity second, and His Plan third. (Humanity ranks above The Plan because, being Ineffable, the Plan cannot be fully understood by our limited capacities and humans often seem to leave it to rot while actually furthering it.) The problem is that many of us, myself included, have histories of putting too much faith into our self-declared "betters," who only purport to be following Our Father's plan.

In order to work on repairing this, the Council of Elder Angels and I have drafted the Heavenly Independent Thought Act, which you can find attached to this notice. This new Act opens up the ability for angels to question the directives given to them by other angels without the fear of retribution. In fact, you are now encouraged to question your orders and the choices made by those above you in the hierarchy, so that everyone understands what we mean to accomplish with everything. The only directive to which this does not apply is the one concerning He Who Must Not Be Named and what will happen to anyone who names him in my presence.

We will begin implementing this new policy immediately and while I welcome you to question my decision, please remember that, in doing so, you are following it rather than furthering your quest to reestablish the old order. Remember, my kindred: change is a good thing.

May this missive find you at peace and in active service of Our Lord.

Your brother and leader,

Castiel (as dictated to his chief secretary, Zachariah).

Zachariah looked up from the missive he'd just taken down and furrowed his brow. Castiel glanced back at him, unruffled and as if to ask what he found so difficult to understand about, 'Do not hesitate in sending this out.' For several minutes, they said nothing, Castiel reviewed once more the full version of the Heavenly Independent Thought Act, and, despite his orders, Zachariah did not send out the missive. Briefly, it occurred to him that this new act might not have worked out too terribly for him.

"You can't be serious, Castiel," he finally said, slouching on his desk and holding up the memorandum.

His — and it still made Zachariah's stomach churn to refer to him as such — superior shrugged and nodded. "I am," Castiel confirmed.

"We're going to have anarchy within a week — within a day! Come on, Castiel: I know that you got your head turned around during your time on Earth, and that your human charges went and distracted you — I still remember having to get your head back on straight after that unfortunate business with Lilith in Kripke's Hollow… But we've had the chain of command established for centuries and with good reason: it works. It keeps everyone organized, and it keeps business moving. I mean, really… The Dean Winchester Model doesn't work even half the time…"

Castiel straightened, and something dark crossed his face. "What was that?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.

"I'm just saying," Zachariah sighed. "If Dean Winchester was up here, trying to run things like this—"

Zachariah did not get to finish that sentence. Instead, Castiel lunged at him over the desk and knocked him to the floor. He pinned Zachariah's shoulders and glared at him. "What is the one rule you are not allowed to question?" he growled.

Zachariah winced as Castiel tightened his hold on his arms. Forcing himself to open his eyes, he answered, "…'Don't mention Dean Winchester'?"

"Good," Castiel huffed. In a flurry of wings, he was on his feet, straightening himself up. "I'm going to my meeting with the Cherubim. Get that missive out."

Sitting up, Zachariah nodded, but as he watched Castiel walk out of the office, he couldn't help muttering, "Son of a bitch."


	3. The Trail Marked On Your Father's Map

From the Desk of Castiel, Archangel.

24th Kislev, 5771. (1st December, 2010 by mortal "civil" reckoning).

Brothers and Sisters,

You've all adjusted well to the new management and to the measures that I've introduced, and for the good work you've all done, I thank you from the bottom of my Grace. However, the purpose of this missive is not one of thanks, or congratulations; you have received this so that I may stem a few rumours that have circulated amongst the Heavenly Host of late. Let us proceed in this with it established that, while you are welcome and encouraged to question my decisions as our acting leader, I do not abide by malicious gossip.

Firstly: yes, it is true. My next move in revolutionising how we do things up here is to institute a so-called 'buddy system,' wherein everyone will be assigned to a partner and expected to routinely meet and spend time with him or her. The purpose of this is not to have you policing each other, as some have suggested, but so that you get to know more of your siblings outside of your assigned garrisons. I personally encourage you to find ways to make this fun for yourselves. Venture down to Earth and see a film together. Have an adventure to a star you've never seen up close. Finger paint. These are just ideas, and you may feel free to come up with your own.

Secondly: there is only one rule I ask that you respect without question, and there will only ever be that one. Do not mention Dean Winchester in my presence. Anyone who does so will be subject to severe consequences. I have already listened to your input and compromised on the initial decree of, 'do not mention Dean Winchester ever'; do nottest me on this.

Please find enclosed your assignments for the new buddy system initiative. It will go into effect immediately, and anyone who has not been in contact and scheduled a first meeting with his or her buddy by the end of the week will also be subject to serious consequences.

Thank you for your time and attention. May this missive find you in peace and the service of the Lord.

Your brother and leader,

Castiel (as dictated to his chief secretary, Zachariah).

Gabriel had nothing against the Cherubim, not really. True, he hadn't particularly enjoyed babysitting them before he'd skipped out of Heaven, but they'd all done a lot of growing up since then and having one assigned to be his 'buddy' under Castiel's new system didn't rub him quite as badly as the past five months had, in general. Barachiel wasn't even one of the worst of the Cupids; he harboured to great a fondness for hugs, perhaps, but then, so did all of the others. Gabriel also didn't harbour any lasting enmity toward romantic comedies. They didn't have the same sort of intelligent writing as the Casa Erotica series, and the relationships lacked the same sort of realistic development, but they had the same purpose as candy did to other beings: mindless fluff with no nutritional value whatsoever, meant to entertain and do nothing else.

This, however, marked his and Barachiel's third meeting under the new 'buddy system' and the quality of their viewings had devolved from When Harry Met Sally and Sixteen Candles to How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. An attempt to make the Cherub sit through Never Been Dicked ended with him in tears all over Gabriel's sofa — the one he'd actually invested time and effort into designing before he made it appear out of thin air. And, since watching anything that didn't have a happy ending was just out of the question, Gabriel was stuck watching two vapid blondes trying to play each other at a game neither could really understand.

At least Barachiel had agreed to just let Gabriel call him 'Cupid' or 'Rocky,' depending on how he felt at any given moment. As he'd explained, he didn't care what Gabriel called him, as long as he called him.

"But don't you think it's just so sweet?" Cupid prodded, as though Gabriel's opinion not only meant the world to him, but also needed to be in-depth and presented in the form of a dissertation and a PowerPoint presentation. "I mean… of course, it's an intriguing spin on the reliable 'battle of the sexes' trope, with her trying to best him at love for work, and him trying to win her over for work, and love triumphing over all as it's wont to do… but they really do love each other. Can't you just see it in how he asks her to go to couple's therapy?"

"Yeah, totally," Gabriel sighed in dull apathy. "Because when I really love someone, my first instinct is to run down a fire escape and tell them that they're mentally imbalanced and our relationship has the stability of water and baking soda. Works like a charm. That's how I bagged a night with Catherine the Great."

Cupid pouted and slouched his shoulders. "I'm not talking about lust, Gabe. I'm talking about love — real love. Like, foot-popping, lung-tightening, sick-to-your-stomach, self-doubt-inducing, all-conquering, makes you weak and wobbly in the knees real love. …Come on. Haven't you ever been in love?"

Gabriel shrugged. "I thought I might be with Kali, once, but then she tried to set me on fire after she caught me in bed with Zeus."

Apparently, this displeased Cupid: his pout turned into an outright frown and with a huff, he crossed his arms over his bare chest. "Well, I think it's perfectly lovely," he announced in a tone of voice that said, So there, ha, I win. "And you can't make me stop believing in true love just because you're a great, big Cynical Cecil."

"Alliterative insulting names are my trick, little brother," Gabriel informed him, rolling his eyes back to the television just in time to watch Kate Hudson and Matthew McNeedsABath start making out on a bridge. He groaned and thumped the back of his head against the sofa. "Jeez, Rocky, seriously. How the Hell can you stand to watch this crap?" Cupid tried to protest that it wasn't crap, but Gabriel raised a hand and continued: "Don't even try that, kiddo. …If some happy couple started really making out on a bridge going out of Manhattan, do you know what would happen? Some pissed off driver would run them into the damn river. It wouldn't be cute, it wouldn't be precious, and it definitely wouldn't be adorable. It would be a gigantic mess of a clusterfuck."

Tears ghosted over Cupid's eyes — though, thankfully, not anywhere else — and an affronted look crossed his chubby face. "You sound just like…" His accusation started, pausing with Cupid's indignation turning into terror. He looked around — right, left, up, down, and finally over the back of the sofa — before whispering, "you know who." At Gabriel's profession that, no, he really didn't know who, Cupid whined. "Oh, brother, please don't make me say it. You know how much Castiel hates it, and… I mean, I just hatethinking about sowing hatred…"

"So describe him to me." Gabriel knew who Cupid meant, but intentionally misdirecting him made the whole process that much more entertaining.

"You know," Cupid hissed, his tone anxious, conspiring. "I. …The one who punched me in the face for talking about his parents?"

"Okay, bro, seriously?" Gabriel stared at him; although he kept his tone light and dry as always, the gravity in his expression couldn't be mistaken. "Castiel is not here. It's just me and you, and I don't give two shits if you want to say Dumbass Winchester's name. It's just a name, and it's not one that hurts anybody or summons destruction if you say it three times, so… Here, watch."

Fervently, Cupid shook his head, pleading, "Oh, no, Gabriel. …Gabe? Gabey? No, don't, please…"

"Shut up, Rocky!" Gabriel snapped. "I'm doing it. …Dean Winchester—"

The head-shaking came faster, and harder. If he'd had a brain, Gabriel had no doubt that Cupid would have somehow damaged it. "No, Gabriel, please, don't—"

A sadistic smirk coiled up the corners of Gabriel's lips. "Dean Winchester."

As he clapped his hands over his ears, Cupid made a whining noise. He fixed his enormous, sopping wet brown eyes on Gabriel, begging him: "Please, brother, stop. …Castiel is going to be so upset with us, Gabey, please—"

Gabriel paused, let his face soften into a pensive visage, and appeared to consider this proposal for a moment. Cupid leaned back towards him, hope dancing into the glints of his eyes and the spark behind his smile — and then, Gabriel smirked. With relish, he concluded: "Dean. Winchester."

Howling like a gibbon during mating season, Cupid flung himself at the floor and curled up with his head between his knees and his arms wrapped around the back of his neck. He screamed, repeating the words enough that they turned into a holy monotony, rather than staying individual syllables — no, no, no, Gabriel, no, his wrath will be great and powerful and no, no, no, I don't want to diiiiie. Gabriel sighed and flopped down to the sofa, putting his hands behind his head and his feet up on an arm rest. Idly, he informed Cupid that, as far as his experiences went, dying hadn't been the worst thing that could happen to a guy, but the Cherub was having none of it.

So Gabriel took a nap. For all angels didn't really need to sleep, and for all he didn't really dream (though he very much wished to do so), the process of actively tuning the entire world out for as long as you wanted had always appealed to Gabriel on a deep, personally resonant level.

When he woke up again, Cupid was still whimpering in a ball on the floor. Sighing, Gabriel crouched by his little brother and rubbed a warm hand up and down his back, whispered sweet nothings about how it was fine and how everything would all turn out okay. As some kind of twisted reward, he found himself tackled to the floor, wrapped up in the tightest hug that Cupid had ever given him. Even though he'd experienced worse pain in his life — and even though it didn't disconcert nearly as much as the damage Castiel had done to his wings and shoulder — Gabriel still couldn't fight off the sensation of being crushed.

"Oh, I'm so glad he didn't punish us for disobedience, brother," Cupid blubbered into Gabriel's neck and shoulder. "Especially not you. …I love love so much, and I just. I couldn'tlive with myself if I made things any worse for you and Castiel. He already has enough reason to be upset with me—"

"It's okay, Rocky!" Gabriel managed to bite out, awkwardly patting his brother on the shoulder. "I swear, it's — it's really fine between us. Peachy keen, even. Promise." Cupid blubbered unintelligibly, but from the sound of it, he either thought it was a good thing that Cas and Gabriel had investigated working out their differences, or he wanted to go down to earth to check out some buy-one-get-one sale on cheesy greeting cards. Gabriel couldn't be certain, so he forced a smile and a tight nod. "Of course, bro. Yeah. Right. …Now can you please get off of me?" Cupid shook his head. "…There's Glee in it for you, if you do," Gabriel sighed.

Cupid flapped his wings and returned to the sofa before Gabriel had time enough to consider the ramifications of the promise he'd just made.

It wasn't that Gabriel had any particular problems with the show itself. For a ridiculous human-crafted mess of a television show, it was okay enough and the songs didn't annoy him enough to deprive Cupid of it when it made him so happy — but watching it with his 'buddy' made an otherwise vaguely tolerable show that much worse. Not five minutes into the episode, Cupid had started sighing over how brave Quinn was ("Handling her pregnancy as well as she is — oh, what a trooper…"), and how sweet Finn was ("He triesso HARD"), and how much in love with Finn Kurt and Rachel were ("It's just so hard — I mean, can't you just feel their pain? …Oh, Gabey, hold me.") — and it only got worse from there.

By twenty minutes, Cupid had single-handedly ruined all of the songs by singing along with them, had put his head onto Gabriel's shoulder, and needed to cuddle the archangel to keep from crying. (This did not, unfortunately, keep him from whimpering every time something emotional happened or braying like a hyena every time someone said something "witty," but one thing Gabriel had accepted since Castiel had brought him back was that, sometimes, you just had to take what life handed you and find some way to pretend it was a pie.) So, Gabriel sighed. And patted Cupid on the back. And tried to keep the eye-rolling to a minimum while Cupid had his gigantic extended Moment about how amazing his show was and how much he loved it.

By thirty minutes, Gabriel had had quite enough of his little brother's bullshit and decided that, by hook or by crook, he would get Cupid to shut up about the stupid singing teenagers and their problems. "Hey, bro?" he inquired. Cupid nodded against his neck, making a little whining noise. "…What'd you do that's so bad you think Mister High And Mighty's going to be pissed off at you for it? I mean… sure, you got Thing One to punch you out, but lots of people have done that and Cas isn't razing all of them to the ground in holy fire."

Cupid looked up at Gabriel in abject horror, fervently shaking his head again. "Oh, no, Gabe, I can't talk about it, it's too… I can't."

Gabriel shrugged. "Hey, it's just us here, you know? And I'm not going to tell anybody, so…"

Once more, Cupid looked around through their entire corner of the sky, as though someone was listening and would get both of them in serious, life-threatening trouble with Castiel for this. When he didn't find anyone eavesdropping, he got a look of relief. Sighing, he slumped into the sofa. "Well, I mean… I failed. Pretty badly. You know that?" Gabriel arched an eyebrow and stared at his brother. "Oh, yeah. It wasn't a big huge deal or anything, not like John and Mary were… It wasn't even on the books anywhere. But I just thought… You know how, in the movies, the hero or the heroine is always so preoccupied with work and it blinds them to true love until the very, very end — the last minute, so late that they might not be able to save it and you can't tell until they do if it's a tragedy or a comedy?" Gabriel supposed that he knew what Cupid meant; really, he'd tuned most of it out and thought about the ladies of the Spearmint Rhino instead. "Well… Castiel reminded me of those people, brother, and… he always seemed sounhappy up here, and I thought that, you know, he might be happier if he had a little love in his life."

"Bro, nothing personal, but Castiel could have all the love in the world slamming into his prostate and he'd still be a grouchy bastard." In response to this (comparatively) innocent character jab at their boss and brother, Cupid knotted his brow and let his lower lip wobble dangerously. Gabriel sighed a half-assed apology. "I'll shut up and let you finish then, okay?"

Cupid nodded, and continued: "So I wanted Castiel to be happy. …And everybody knows that Dean's pretty much miserable — he punched me in the face because he's so miserable! I can't even be mad at him for that!" Not for the first time, it occurred to Gabriel that his little brother might have been as much of a moron as Sam and Dean were. "And I was working on it before they found me… I actually thought that he'd seen it when he read my mind, and that's why he got all upset about it… But he didn't. And then he and Dean split up after saving the world, and after Cas gave up so much for him — and just, who does that, Gabriel? Who. does. that?" Gabriel supposed that he had no idea who did that. Cupid wailed, "I DON'T EITHER."

Sobbing his eyes out again, Cupid flung his arms around Gabriel's shoulders and cried into the archangel's shoulder. As the dulcet tones of the Glee kids singing "Lean On Me" raged on in the background, Gabriel patted Cupid's back and took to whispering the same crap he'd done before about how everything would work out right eventually. Instead of calming down like he was supposed to, Cupid hiccuped, and since he couldn't fall asleep while his brother was clinging to him, Gabriel just let his mind wander off onto other notions — which was how he happened upon The Idea.

The Idea did not come to him suddenly, like the flicker of a Zippo lighter in a wet cave, and it didn't bring itself into existence nicely or patiently, like the warm glow of inspiration. Instead, it whanged him with the force of a bullet in his skull and without any regard for his brain. For several moments, he just stared blankly at the wall before him, hardly aware of Cupid's quiet sobbing and the feeling of his shoulders being crushed into powder. It was just… It seemed too simple to be real, and yet, Gabriel couldn't think of why it hadn't occurred to him sooner. He patted Cupid's back in a slow, repetitive rhythm, thinking over what he'd have to do — Castiel could get out of any Trickster business now, and Dean would see it coming from a mile away but would need the message explained to him.

Frowning, Gabriel's eyes darted back to his brother and he realised: he had a walking encyclopedia of romance tropes burying its face in his neck. The smile that graced his lips was easily among the most devious smiles of all time.

"Hey, Bro," Gabriel whispered. Cupid nodded, with a small, whining noise. "I've just had a brilliant idea."

Cupid moaned. "Whaaaat? It can't be brilliant enough to fix everything."

"Let's get them back together."

"Whooooo?"

"Brad and Jennifer. My life just hasn't been the same since he got with Angelina Jolie."

"Oh, Gabe, I know the feeling, but I can't undo—"

"Dean and Castiel, you idiot!" Gabriel snapped.

"Ohhhh," Cupid agreed as the realisation hit him. "…I don't know, brother. We can't even talk about Dean — do you really think we—"

"Details, details," Gabriel scoffed, finally nudging Cupid out of the embrace. With both hands on his brother's shoulders, he declared, "Trust me, Rocky. Getting those two to fuck again is going to be a cake-walk."


	4. My Mother, Brother, Sister, & My Friends

"Excuse me — I seem to have misheard you. …You want a what, Gabriel?"

Even by angelic standards, Israfel was unbelievably pretty, a fact that rubbed him with all the tact, grace, and pleasantness of sandpaper. As far as his opinion mattered, everything that made him beautiful had to be some kind of a curse. He hated his high, finely carved cheekbones, and he'd been cutting his black hair short for eons, just to avoid growing the ringlets and curls that, by existing alone, tempted people to pull on them. His green eyes glinted like beetle shells, and presently, they narrowed up at the angels bothering him until they'd practically closed — and Gabriel's expression didn't change. The smug, self-entitled smirk on the archangel's offered no evidence for why this request purportedly meant any sense at all. Beside him stood Barachiel, of the Cupids, who simply smiled and wiggled his fat little fingers.

Gabriel waggled his eyebrows as if to suggest that Israfel could hurry up and get on with making his life easier now.

"…No?" Israfel hazarded, idly tapping his pen against his desk. "Honestly, I have no idea what you think you're talking about or why I ought to acquiesce to your request in the slightest."

"How about because I outrank you and I said so, Izzie, huh?"

Israfel sighed, fighting the powerful temptation to roll his eyes at that atrocious nickname. True, Gabriel outranked him on the Heavenly hierarchy. He always had, and despite his history of defection and borderline treason, he always would, but — "Blindly following your insane whims because you told me to do so is not part of my job description."

"Oh, please, can we just borrow a choir for a little bit, brother?" Cupid asked, eyes glimmering with hopes that, unbeknownst to him, would soon be dashed and bleeding on the pavement.

Israfel shook his head. "I know that many people consider my work one of the greatest jokes in the Spheres, brothers," he told them with a sigh, turning the pen over in his fingers, "but, regardless, of everyone else's opinions on it, I take my job as orchestrator of the Heavenly Chorus very seriously — and I do not simply loan out my voices for some… ridiculous plan that isn't even going to work. And is hardly any business of yours, besides that."

"Oh, come off it!" Gabriel huffed. "Everybody's getting tired of Castiel's 'Mister Tough Angel' act, Izzie—"

"I, personally, have had no trouble with how our leader has taken to running things."

"You are the biggest kiss-ass I've ever met. And that's including the entire Spartan army."

"Well, perhaps you should have considered that not everyone will always agree with you and your notions of what to do about anything."

"We're not talking about absconding with your choir boys and keeping them forever and ever," Gabriel insisted. "We just want to borrow them for a little bit, so we can have some nice background music while we get Dean and Castiel to do the horizontal rumba."

"Are you serious?" In a moment of silence, Israfel stared up at Gabriel, peering into his hazel eyes with the unmoved placidity of a cow on a train track. He didn't even bother looking into his brother's mind, because the shock of being told 'no' answered every question of motivation and intent that Israfel could have come up with. "…You, gentle brothers, will need to find your soundtrack somewhere else." Rising to his feet, he concluded, "Now, if neither of you opposes it, I have a rehearsal to oversee."

"Pleeease, Israfel?" Cupid begged, his brow knotting up, his eyes distraught. "It's for the pursuit of true love! Nothing could be grander, or more important, or—"

"Brother," Israfel interrupted flatly. "Take Gabriel with you and get out of my office."

Gabriel and Cupid slumped out of the office with their heads down and their shoulders slouched; neither of them paid any ostensible mind to Israfel as he made his way past toward the rehearsal space. Had anyone been around and of the mind to notice it, they would have seen Gabriel glaring after the angel of music's back and muttering a string of curses in various languages (intelligibly: English, Spanish, German, Russian, Babylonian, Latin, Enochian, and Swedish) — but the only other being who could have seen was Cupid, and his attentions belonged more to staving off the desire to sob uncontrollably. With a sigh, Gabriel patted his brother on the shoulder, and got one of Cupid's odd little noises in response.

"Gabey," he whimpered, "what're we gonna do?"

"Well, first," Gabriel mused aloud, "I'm going to go punch out Israfellatio. Then I suggest we regroup and try to work around the plan's reliance on background music."

"Can't we just skip right to the second part?" Cupid's frown deepened, and grew more pathetic, at the mention of possible violence erupting amongst his brothers. One of the best things that Castiel had done, in his opinion, was bringing peace to Heaven (even if he'd done so by waging war against their brothers and sisters who'd chosen to side with Michael or Raphael); they couldn't go and ruin that just because of Cupid's plan. Gabriel considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "…Oh. So what do we do now, then?"

"You, little brother, are staying right here," Gabriel announced. "Wait for Izzie to come back, and then work on charming the holy chorus out of him. I don't care how you do it, just make sure that it gets done. Even if we only get it for the very end, we need background music for this plot and his folks are better than anything I could come up with." Gabriel knew. He'd tried to trump Israfel's choir before.

"Well, you know why that is, right?" Cupid explained, voice brightening as he delved headlong into his tangent. "I mean — not that I'm doubting your reality-warping powers or anything, brother, because I'm not. I really loved that one trick you did, the one with the slow-dancing alien? Oh, and then there was the Mystery Spot — but anyway. …So, the reason why Israfel's choruses are better than yours are because, you know, you can make anything you want, but it's just not going to replace the time, and the energy, and the pure love that he puts into training his singers, and you—"

Gabriel held up his hand. "Stop talking," he huffed. "Just… think about how you're going to get him to go along with the plan, okay?"

Cupid agreed, and then had a thought. "So, while I'm doing that… what are you going to do?"

"Me?" Gabriel asked. Cupid nodded. "I, brother, am going to go and improvise."

Down on Earth, on lonely a state highway in Indiana, winter had settled in quite nicely back not too long after Halloween and, by the first few days of December, no one could have told that there'd ever been a patch of green anywhere. As the Impala sailed down the well-salted roads, blaring Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Tombstone Shadow" at all the unsuspecting suburbanites for the fifth time that day, Dean was, for once, sitting in the passenger's seat, slumped against the car's door, resting his head on her window. Despite being the driver for the past two hundred miles, Sam hadn't humoured the thought of making his brother change the music; he just had a private smile over the fact that Dean hadn't reached to change this tape halfway into the song.

So far, they'd cycled through Metallica ("Nothing Else Matters" — because Dean needed more of a reason to mope self-indulgently), Janis Joplin ("Piece Of My Heart" — because, again, Dean really needed another excuse to sulk like some jilted fourteen-year-old), Johnny Cash (the better part of his Greatest Hits, before Dean had decided that he only wanted to listen to "Cry, Cry, Cry" on a frustrated loop; by the tenth time, Sam had invoked the right to "driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cake-hole" and made Dean put on something else), and Led Zeppelin ("When The Levee Breaks," "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You," and part of "Travelling Riverside Blues"). Nothing that went on stayed for very long, and Sam frowned when Dean took out the Zeppelin tape. As though nothing else about his brother's behaviour made it obvious, the fact that they hadn't finished one of his favourite songs was a neon sign in a dark night, screaming, PAY ATTENTION, SAM. SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG HERE.

But what was Sam supposed to do? Dean hadn't said anything yet, and he wouldn't say anything until he wanted to; the last adventure in prodding him had only wound up with him snapping at Sam to mind his own business and subsequently downing the better part of a bottle of Jack. Even asking after the rapidly shifting music, when Dean made the abrupt shift from "Travelling Riverside Blues" to King Crimson's "I Talk To The Wind," wound up inadvertently causing capital-T-Trouble: "What the Hell do you mean, 'Why're you changing songs like that,' Sammy?" Dean had balked. "What, I mean… a man can't choose the music in his own damn car?"

With a begrudging sigh, Sam had agreed that, yes, Dean could choose the music in his own car. "But it's not the music I'm asking about," he'd explained. "It's the fact that you're cycling through it like some ADD Chihuahua."

"Yeah, and you know why? Because I feel like it."

Sam sighed to himself and put the argument out of his mind, choosing to focus on the road and getting to Lisa's place in one piece instead. Through the next few cycles, Sam bit his tongue and kept his thoughts to himself — and Dean seemed to be rewarding him by not tearing out the mixtape of CCR as soon as he got bored. They made it through "Bad Moon Rising," "Cottonfields," and "Run Through the Jungle" without incident, and even though Dean repeated "Tombstone Shadow" a grand total of seven times, it seemed that they had finally found some music that wouldn't unreasonably irritate him — until the opening chords of "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" started up.

For a moment, it all went as though nothing would happen. A smile crossed Sam's face for the first time in what felt like too long, and he tapped his palm on the steering wheel in time with the music. Dean, on the other hand, glowered at the radio, silently questioning how it had fucking dared to play this song in his presence. Nothing continued to happen: the wet road slid by under the tires, Sam started bobbing his head along with the music, and then… the chorus came and Sam just couldn't help himself.

"Iiiiiii wanna know," he sang along, "have you ever seen the rain? Comin' down on a sunny — Hey!" The tape shot out of the deck and, grimacing, Dean flung it into the trunk. They went two miles down the road without any sounds besides the gravel and the rubber. "…Okay, you know what," Sam sighed, "I gotta ask: what the Hell is your problem today?"

"Nothing," Dean snapped. "I'm fucking awesome."

Sam rolled his eyes. "What, is it because Lisa and Becky asked you to come to their pre-Christmas? The one that they're having at all because you told them that you didn't want to be alone for the holidays, and because you wanted to spend time with Ben, but didn't know if we'd be hunting or not when the big day rolls around?"

Dean's frown mutated into a deep scowl, but he said everything with the darkness that took over his green eyes, giving the appearance of an oncoming tornado. To be fair, Sam knew that bringing up Lisa was a touchy subject. One minute, it had been, Come on in, Dean, let's have a beer and talk about how you really are Ben's biological father; the next, it had been, Dean, I love you, but I don't know how well we're working out as a couple; and finally, it had been, Your friend is really nice, she's great with Ben, and she can't go through being pregnant alone. …Is she single? Getting dumped at all sucked — especially when Dean (and, more importantly, his pride) was the one being dumped, and especially when he'd actually liked Lisa as much as he had — but getting dumped for Becky… Well, Sam imagined that it had to sting.

It still didn't explain the posture and its hunched shoulders, or the storm cloud expression he wore, or the fact that all of the music they'd endured on this trip had, somehow or other, been selected so Dean could stick it on and mope.

"You know, just a thought, Dean?" Sam shrugged, glancing away from a long stretch of straight road to look his brother in the eyes. "Maybe, if you talked about what's been going on for you? …I don't know, maybe someone could help. Or you could at least get it off your chest and stop taking it out on everybody?"

Dean sighed and thumped his head against the seat. "I told you it's fucking nothing, okay? It's just… That's like the only song that Cas and I ever agreed on. It still…" Reminds me of the way he tilted his head when he didn't understand something. Gets me itching to fuck the stupid bastard into the mattress like we did before we took on Raphael. Makes me miss him so bad that I just want to claw my eyes out. "I don't know. I just don't want to listen to it."

Although he still wanted to smack Dean upside the head for being such a difficult little shit, Sam allowed his expression to melt into a kind of sympathy. "It's okay to miss him, you know," he said, his tone soft, the gentle sort of voice that he usually used to mollify Dean when his temper got the best of him.

Dean glared daggers at his brother, letting the sound of their forward motion take up the space in which he could've been speaking. "What is wrong with you?" he finally huffed. "I don't miss that junk-less son of a bitch. He got his angel powers back and wanted to get gone back to Heaven, then fine. He can leave. For all I care, he can fucking stay gone. I'll be fine. I always am."

"Yeah," Sam murmured in agreement, biting back the exasperated sigh that he so desperately wanted to let slip. "Yeah, you always are."

And so they drove on in silence, until Dean gave up on the lack of talking and shoved an Alice Cooper cassette into the deck. As they pulled into Lisa's neighborhood, Dean hummed along to "Poison," muttering along with the chorus and particularly spitting the parts about how he wanted to kiss the addressee too much. Outside, a woman in a parka and boots paused her walk and stared at the Impala; Sam just pressed on to Lisa's home and pulled up in the driveway, leaving a fresh set of tread-marks in the small accumulation of snow. He got out of the car immediately, and started picking bags to carry in out of the trunk. Dean sat in his seat, sliding further down into it and staring at his baby's ceiling. Christmas was just a fucking crock-pot full of suck this year, and Dean didn't see any way that it could get better.

On the plus, he guessed, it pretty much couldn't get any worse either, considering he'd already had Cas leave him, Lisa dump him (and for a virgin. A virgin who wrote gay porn about Sam and Dean having sex), and his years spent trying to save the world not really be worth a sharp stick up the persqueeter because, sure, they'd avoided the Apocalypse, but now every other dark and evil thing had kicked its monster act into overdrive and not enough hunters had made it out of Armageddon alive. Dean smacked the back of his head into the seat again, and then another time for good measure. Maybe he wasn't dreaming, and maybe this wouldn't wake him up from anything — but a little bit of pain just reminded him that he was still alive and kicking, and that, regardless of his own feelings, people needed him to maintain some façade of having it together. And to do it better than he'd been pulling off around Sam.

Dean startled when a series of short raps came on the window, and stared up into his brother's bemused expression. Pointedly, Sam held up his bags of presents, booze, food, and miscellaneous Christmas treats; Dean sighed, and slunk out of the car. The snow crunched underneath his boots, and Dean didn't even call Sam a bitch when he shunted some of the bags into his hands or when he patronisingly told Dean to come on. Upon Sam's pressing it, the doorbell played an unnervingly happy series of notes that set Dean's stomach on edge. When Lisa came to the door to let them in, she wore a hand-knit sweater with a pattern of a reindeer on it; Sam complimented it with a broad grin, leaning down when Lisa held up her cheek for a kiss. Dean only shrugged, and guessed that it was okay.

"Becky made it," Lisa explained, glowing a warm pink at the mention of her girlfriend. "She's just been knitting up a storm lately — I guess her office has mostly been having meetings for the holidays. Ben's got Santa Claus, Becky and Samantha Dee are wearing a Christmas tree, and she made some for you two, too."

"That's great," Sam agreed, continuing to be a smiley goddamn Sasquatch. "I hope she's not making you go dry for her, because… I mean, we knew that she couldn't drink, but—"

"Who's Samantha Dee?" Dean said, cutting Sam off and not even looking up at him by way of apologizing.

Lisa rubbed her lips together and looked around them as though some vampire might have been laying in wait to bite her neck. "It's… Well, it's what we've been calling the baby. …It's not official yet, we haven't decided anything, but… Becky likes Samantha Deanna as a name, so we've started saying Samantha Dee."

Dean and Sam traded arched eyebrows, but once Sam went and agreed that it sounded like a lovely name, Lisa, Dean returned to glowering at Lisa's and his brother's backs. It figured that Becky would name Jesus Mark Two after the Almost Antichrist.

Without a word, Dean followed Sam and Lisa to the den, where they found Ben on the sofa, thumbing through the latest issue of Batman comics, and Becky sitting in an armchair, grinning like a crazy person at the bubblegum pink sock she had her knitting needles in. Both were, as Lisa had said, wearing their home-made holiday sweaters. Becky's Christmas tree had sequins sewn into the yarn to decorate the ornaments and the star on top, and to serve as Christmas lights; Ben's reindeer had sunglasses.

"Hi, guys!" Becky beamed at them — as always, more at Sam than at Dean — and Ben abandoned the ornaments he was hanging up to come and hug Dean around the middle. For all her face hadn't changed much since the last time he'd seen her, Dean couldn't look away from Becky's (much larger) tits or her very pregnant belly, the one that would, in a few months, pop out the second Jesus, whose life he'd also be spectacularly uninvolved with, just like his son's. Patting the top of Ben's head, Dean forced a smile so hard that his face ached. But it was, he figured, better than nothing — and hey, he had to at least try to enjoy this.

After half an hour of trying to enjoy this, Dean stormed out into the backyard, boots smashing the snow like a first-time drunk in a china shop. He stomped right past the playscape that Ben had started to outgrow, up to the fence, and stared up at the clouds. When nothing showed itself to be in evidence, he slunk back toward the playset and the attached swing set, and despite his legs being far too long for it, tried to make himself comfortable on one of the swings. This idea quickly proved to be one of Dean's worse ones, and he relegated himself to leaning on the ladder to the slide instead. With a sigh, he looked back up at the sky, at the barren sunlight that danced across the snow and at the mix of different fluffy cloud formations — here, he thought he saw a set of wings, but, in the end, it was just a patch that couldn't decide between life as cirrus or cumulus.

Shaking his head, Dean pulled out his phone and flipped through the contacts list. He knew that this was a stupid idea. Even if Heaven got cell reception, it wasn't like Cas would pick up, and even if he would have, his phone had probably run out of minutes ages ago. As he pressed the button to dial out, Dean stared up at the leaf-less trees instead of at his screen. He held the phone to his ear as the ringing started up. Once, twice, three times — a pause — Dean's breath hitched in his throat as he waited to hear something, anything, but hopefully that gravelly voice that irritated and soothed and did twenty different things to Dean at once — a click, and then…

"You have reached the voicemail of," said the tinny, probably automated voice of the woman responsible for informing Dean that Cas was going to be a bastard today, just like he had been every day before, for longer than Dean cared to think.

"I don't understand," Castiel's voice responded. It sounded just like Dean remembered it, the same way it had sounded every other time he'd tried to call and gotten cock-blocked. His lips contorted into a thin, white line, and then a deep frown. "Why do you want me to say my name?"

The beep rang out like a gunshot; Dean sighed. He could just say whatever he wanted, he supposed. It wasn't like Cas was ever coming back to wherever he could check it — not like he'd check it, even if he wanted to come back down to the rabble. "What the Hell," he muttered, voice barely above a whisper and only growing louder as he spoke. "Seriously, Cas? Thanks for sticking me with your freaking voicemail — again. Don't know how it's not full yet. I keep calling you — don't know why, since it keeps getting me jack-crap nothing. But, just… What the fuck, Cas. You were supposed to be here. I thought—"

"I'm sorry," said the woman's voice again, "but the message box you called has reached its full capacity. Please try your call again later."

Dean hung up with a grunt and threw his phone across the backyard; it sailed right past Sam, nearly missing him as he emerged from the house. Concern knotted his brow and put an odd glint in his eyes, one that Dean didn't like acknowledging, much less looking at. Frowning, he contemplated the snow between his feet and his bootprints in it. Sam's steps went away from him first, and Dean only looked up when they doubled back around, coming toward him. Sam had the cellphone in his hand. Giving it back to Dean happened politely enough (although Dean grabbed at the phone instead of just accepting it), but came with an attached awkward silence, the one that always came when Sam had to find the right words to express what he wanted at Dean. Nothing sounded right in his head, and even more importantly, nothing sounded like it could actually get Dean to talk to him — quite the opposite, most of it had the ring of things that would just make Dean shut down completely.

Ultimately, Dean made the decision for him: "No," he huffed preemptively, pocketing his phone, shoving himself off the ladder, and stalking back toward the house. "We are not going to fucking talk about it."

Sam sighed and leaned on the ladder where Dean had been. Hands in his pockets, he looked up at the sky, then over the fence and into one of the other yards, and finally down at the snow. Moving on had always been a huge part of their lives. Dean had taught Sam that when they were kids — being a hunter meant that you picked yourself up and, even if you didn't deal with the crap that fell on you, you at least put it out of your mind because there were other people — good people, innocent people — who depended on you to keep them safe without knowing that they did so. And you had to preserve that, because their happiness and their ability to keep it was why the world, for all of its grime, was worth saving at all.

And here Dean was, doing the exact opposite with The Castiel Situation. Sam sighed and pulled out his own phone; he flipped down to Cas's number, but didn't dial it. The sheer number of times Dean had called the angel in the past six months hadn't escaped Sam, but he didn't understand, either of them. Why Dean kept dialling when he didn't get anything, what was so important in Heaven that Cas couldn't come back for Dean (and that had no apparent signs on Earth, besides) —

"Well, he's a tetchy little thing, isn't he?" a familiar voice asked, shattering the heavy silence.

Sam's eyes jumped up from his phone's screen. At first, he didn't see anybody. Darting away from the playscape, he turned around — and then they made themselves obvious, not dressed for the weather at all and wearing, instead, expressions that were far too friendly. Crowley had picked up his vessel of choice, the literary agent with the short, dark hair; Bela, since she couldn't wear her old meat, had selected a pretty redhead with green eyes and a constellation of freckles scattered across her pale skin.

"Don't worry," she said with a smile. "She was in a permanent vegetative state and no one had claimed her body — I have the papers to prove it, if you like."

Sam sighed and let his shoulders slump a little closer to the grounds. "Respecting my thoughts on possessing people isn't going to make me come with you guys," he informed them flatly. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm sort of up to my eyes in other things to be busy with and I told you before: I don't care how you two want to run things Downstairs, just… don't involve me."

"Yes, we know," Crowley agreed. "And I think it is just so admirable of you to be dedicating your time to caring for an emotionally unstable brother after his lovely, angelic boyfriend dumped his sorry arse."

"He's not emotionally — well, he is kind of unstable, but — …it's not that simple, alright?"

"I don't see any other complications. Do you, Bela?"

Smiling, she shook her head. The loose curls ran across her shoulders and the back of her neck — Sam caught himself staring and immediately looked up at the sky instead, trying to put any untoward thoughts of her out of his mind. Bela chuckled, bunching up her hair and tying it back with the ponytail holder on her wrist. "Better, Sam?" she asked. He nodded, and she continued: "Also, no, I don't see any other complications. What I do see is a king who ran away from his throne—"

"Gabriel took me away," Sam snapped, the exasperation with this entire day bubbling up and losing any control that Sam might have exercised on it. "Look, I didn't want this position then, and I don't want it now, but at least… be fair and stop acting like my leaving was some grand escape plan that I orchestrated."

Crowley shrugged and leaned his head against the ladder. "That would almost be a thought in my mind," he said, "except for the part where I can't even begin to fathom how on Earth you would have the ability to take a dead archangel and get him to raise you from Hell."

"And while we still don't understand why they raised you," Bela picked up, exactly where Crowley had left off, a note of urgency slipping into her voice, "that fact is not nearly as important as what we need to do now that they have. Running Hell is not an easy business, Sam—"

"And you two didn't know that when you first got into this?" Sam pointed out.

"Of course we did." Crowley held up a hand, with the intent that it would keep Sam quiet for a minute. "It isn't as though we just woke up one morning and thought to ourselves, 'Oh, I feel like commanding all the demons in the world today, that sounds like it would be a trip to Disneyland' — but unforeseen difficulties have arisen, and we need you to put aside your charming domestic drama and come assist us in clearing them up."

Sam paused, and looked from Crowley to Bela, then back again. He saw the worry etching itself in every line on their faces, and with a sigh, he asked, "…What kind of unforeseen difficulties?"

"The sort that involve a demoness called Belial," Crowley said, as though this explained everything. From the bemused expression that crossed his face, he expected some kind of a reaction out of Sam — shock, or horror, or anything but standing there and failing to understand what Crowley meant.

"You've met her before," Bela amended, rolling her eyes. (She enjoyed men, and male demons, of course she did. But, really, attempting to talk to them just got so tedious after a while.) "She's the demon otherwise known as Meg Masters."

As though it hadn't been cold enough outside, that name sent a small shiver up Sam's spine. "…But Meg is dead," he tried to argue. "She — Castiel dropped her into holy fire."

"Which would have been terribly effective," Crowley told him, voice quiet and eyes grave, "had she been anyone's child but Azazel's."

The mention of Yellow Eyes also sent a freezing sensation throughout Sam's body, as though a glacier had been dropped into his stomach. He listened, at full attention, while Crowley and Bela explained the whole story: back, back, back, several eons ago, after Lucifer's rebellion but before his entrapment in Hell, Azazel had been a member of the angelic guard, one of the Grigori. ("Watchers," Crowley explained, catching Sam's confusion on the matter. "Look in the Book of Enoch sometime. Your friend Bobby Singer has at least three copies of it, and it'd be a good learning experience for you.") Led astray by Lucifer's tempting, his response was to lead a group under his command to sleep with mortal women, for which he fell into Hell and became a demon.

"So, Meg — I mean. Belial," Sam said. "She really was his daughter?"

"Oh yes." Crowley nodded, with a dry smirk. "Did it never occur to you that she was far more powerful than the average demon?"

"Of course it did, but… We never really wondered after why."

"And now you know," Bela pointed out. Behind her little smile, Sam could see the tug of her growing impatience, and he didn't entirely begrudge her that. In this situation, he probably wouldn't have enjoyed dealing with himself that much either. "The why isn't important, Sam," she continued. "What matters is what she plans to do."

"And that is…?"

Crowley sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets. Straightening up, he assumed the posture of a boss on the verge of delivering some terrible news about the status of someone's position. "Since the Battle of Armageddon, most of our kin have gathered that Lucifer is not the saviour of demon-kind as he liked to make us believe he was. However, there remain a few… shall we say, dissidents, who refuse to give up the belief in a dark messiah that is going to come up from Hell and give us all a permanent vacation in bloody Candy Land — all the human souls we can eat, and nothing standing in our way."

"Belial has made herself the leader of a small, but vocal, and moreover powerful, minority of demons," Bela explained. "They call themselves the Luciferians. And they're plotting to raise You-Know-Who out of his cage by way of bringing about his purported demonic Paradise on Earth."

"What about the Seals?" Sam asked. "I mean, there were some that Lilith didn't break — but she's dead and Dean's not in Hell to break the first one again, so… how are they going to spring Lucifer from the Hot Box?"

"And you expect us to know?" Crowley balked. "We haven't the foggiest, Sam, and no self-respecting Luciferian would tell us the time of day, much less their master plan for getting the Devil back out of Hell. All we know is that Belial is leading them — and, if you need any added incentive, they're planning on coming for your Virgin Becky."

For a long moment, Sam just stared ahead at the two demons talking at him, looking from Crowley to Bela and back again, trying to find some way that he could argue with what they were trying to sell him. He couldn't find one. Running a hand back through his hair, he asked, "So, you need me and Dean to go and hunt her down and… put her out of our misery?"

"That would be the notion, yes," Crowley told him with an expectant, impatient smile. "If it doesn't overlap too terribly much with your brother's pre-scheduled temper tantrum."

Sam sighed. "I'll talk to him, okay? And we'll get on it, just… Let him have today. He's not managing well as it is."

Crowley and Bela didn't even answer Sam with a nod; they simply vanished into thin air with simultaneous snaps of their fingers.

As he slouched back into the house, Sam had every intention of just going back to the living room and passing around presents like he'd done before he'd left to go bring Dean back. Life, however, had other plans.

Sam didn't notice anything off at first — mostly because there was nothing all that off to notice. Pausing, he went to the cupboard with the glasses and picked one out. He filled it with a bit of ice from Lisa's fridge, and then added water onto it; leaning against the counter, he started drinking, only to hear a boisterous, "Heeey-o, Sammy!"

The glass fell from his fingers and, effectively startled, Sam darted around the kitchen, looking for whoever had addressed him. He paused again when the glass — and the water — reappeared in his hand. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, he felt his drink slipping and gripped onto it tighter; instead of dropping it again, he spun around and found himself met with the presence of a familiar figure who, by all rights, really should have been anywhere but Lisa's kitchen. Much shorter than Sam, hazel eyes beaming with a mischievous urge that probably never left them, Gabriel stood there, looking perfectly at home. Wide-eyed, pressing his lips together until they both turned white, Sam just stared at him.

"Hey there, big guy!" the archangel said brightly, smirking the smirk that unequivocally said that he knew something Sam didn't. "Careful with those glasses. Lisa paid good money for them and I can't come cleaning up your messes all the time."

Sam stopped and tried to catch his breath, looking Gabriel up and down several times, and trying to find on his own any kind of answer for the question he spluttered out: "What are you doing here, Gabriel?"

"Just making a courtesy visit," Gabriel explained, by way of not explaining anything at all. With a self-satisfied bounce in his step, he scooted past Sam and started pacing around the kitchen. Idly, he picked up an apple out of Lisa's basket of them and tossed it from one hand to the other. "Or, anyway, I thought it'd be polite to tell you before I started in on my master plan."

Sam sighed — he didn't like this reaction, but he also couldn't help it. Learning about Belial's master plan had been more than enough for him for one day. "Look, unless it involves keeping Becky safe from the demons who want to take her baby… I really just don't have the time or the energy to care, okay?"

Gabriel paused, and considered this for a moment. He hadn't heard about any plans to go after Dad's latest Virgin or her baby — but, ultimately, he supposed that it wasn't really his problem. "Oh, you'll care when I tell you what it is," he said with a shrug. Without waiting for Sam to give him permission to start, Gabriel went on, "I'm sure you've noticed that your brother's been an even bigger pain in the ass than usual since the Apocalypse. And my brother has just — you don't even want to know the things that Castiel's been pulling Upstairs—"

"Gabriel," Sam interrupted, snapping more than he'd originally meant to. "I don't care. Bela and Crowley just told me about this plan going around to raise Lucifer again, and as long as we stop it, Dean can be as much of a bitch to me as he wants—"

"Well, he won't be a bitch for long." Turning back to face Sam, Gabriel leaned down, resting his elbows on the counter top and smiling like a cat next to an open fish-tank. "I'm getting him and Castiel back together." That had not been what Sam expected to hear out of the archangel. He'd planned several retorts for anything Gabriel had wanted to say about him being difficult, or not having a sense of humour, or anything else… But, instead, this assertion gave him pause and he just stared, slack-jawed and at an utter loss for words. "Your jaw's flexible," Gabriel said after a full minute-and-a-half had passed. "Good to know. I might need to use that information later."

The archangel stood, and started heading for the door. "Wait!" Sam huffed. When Gabriel turned back, he asked, "What are you planning to do to them, Gabriel?"

"Oh, Sammy," Gabriel chided gently. "I can't go telling you that. You might run off and tell your brother, and then there'd be nothing fun to make them work for anymore."

"Just… please be careful with them?" Sam requested, his voice almost trembling. Gabriel pretended to consider this, and then gave the taller Winchester a noncommittal shrug. "Please, Gabriel? …It's important. …Dean's been in a bad place since Cas left. And I can't stop these demons without him."

"Fiiiiine," Gabriel sighed, rolling his eyes. "One happy couple's reunion, hold the dangerous stunts and with an extra side of unnecessary caution. Got it."

And, in a flurry of feathers and the sound of beating wings, he disappeared.

Sam leaned down, putting his glass on the counter, and then his elbows afterward. Groaning, he put his forehead in his hands and tried to think of a solution to the insane problems that had just been dumped in his lap, a process that quickly consumed him and all of his thoughts. He barely even noticed when Becky came in and, with a warm hand on his shoulders, led him back to the living room to open up his sweater.


	5. They Call It Bella Notte

The first step, Gabriel decided, was to get Dean and Castiel in the same room together, and the best way to do that, Cupid argued, considering the desired end of getting them back in love and out of everyone else's collective hair, was to set them up on a nice, romantic dinner date. Rather than making a restaurant of his own out of thin air, he reserved them a table at a nice, Italian place (Cupid had said something inane about dogs and spaghetti being terribly romantic), and conveniently disguised himself as a waiter. He'd sent missives to both Dean and Castiel, naming this place, the time, and the name under which the reservation had been made, and hopefully, they'd both show up. Castiel, he knew, wouldn't turn down the promised opportunity to get inside information on demonic plans from Crowley; whether or not Dean would show up to meet a purportedly apologetic-and-missing-him Cas, though, was a different story.

Dean arrived first — dressed in the same t-shirt, jeans, and jacket that he'd worn out hunting — and glanced around the restaurant as though something, lurking somewhere inside it, needed to be killed before it ate him. The charming hostess led him to a nice, relatively out-of-the-way table, which, courtesy of Gabriel's good nature and creative whims, already housed two shot glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels. To the archangel's mild surprise, Dean didn't hit the booze straight off. Instead, he looked around, sighed, and idly fussed with the napkin tied around his silverware. The elder Winchester had looked younger than his real age for as long as Gabriel had known him, but the anxiety behind the darting of his eyes gave him an especially youthful edge tonight, like the shit-head kid who'd eaten the last cookie in the jar.

As he waited, Dean pulled out his phone. He perused the contacts, lingering on no name, except for Castiel's — but, by what had to be, in Gabriel's estimation, some kind ofmiracle of pig-headed stupidity, looking at it over and over didn't result in Dean dialing it. He only continued surveying the place, routinely looking at the space between his knees every time Castiel didn't show. A pretty blonde waitress brought Dean a glass of water when he asked for it, and the bread basket showed up at the table before the missing angel did. So much for this, Gabriel thought to himself as he took a tray of pasta dishes to a table that seemed to be hosting a family reunion. There had only been a handful of times when being wrong had upset the archangel quite so much as this. One had involved Lucifer stabbing him, and the worst had happened when he'd lost a bet with Baldur on the Trojan War.

Gabriel left his latest run and headed for Dean's table, preparing to play everything off as a bad joke gone wrong, thereby cutting the kid loose so he could go home and sulk somewhere it wasn't costing him money — but he didn't get there. At the sound of flapping wings, Gabriel stopped dead in his tracks, and in a flurry of tablecloths and toppled glasses, Castiel appeared, wearing the same trenchcoat and pensive, surly expression — looking, for all intents and purposes, as though the past six months hadn't happened. Dean rose to his feet slowly, mouth gaping. Before his boss could spot him, Gabriel ducked behind a convenient corner and pressed his back against the wall. He stayed very careful, kept his movements slow, as he peered out at the two of them. Maybe this waiter visage would fool Dean, but Castiel had more brains about him and Gabriel wanted to watch this magic happen.

…If the magic happened at all.

Oh, it would. He trusted that it would, but, to be fair, he was dealing with two stubborn, emotionally stunted blockheads, and keeping his mouth shut, he cursed his unreasonable expectations (but mostly Dean and Castiel) for the lack of a magical start. For a moment, all they did was stand there and stare at each other. The grimace that crossed Dean's face seemed so inappropriate that Gabriel had to do a double-take. He'd seen Dean looking scared, angry, enamoured, and on the verge of tears — but never all four at the same time, and certainly not without an attempt at hiding them behind a cocksure smirk. Castiel tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

"Cas…" Dean started, stepping around the table to move toward him. Had it not been for his angelic ears, Gabriel wouldn't have been able to hear. "It's good to—"

Castiel cut him off: "What are you doing here, Dean?"

Dean's eyes widened momentarily, and he paused in his advance. "What do you mean 'what am I doing here'?" he demanded, brow furrowing and a more tangible, clearly upset frown beginning to form on his lips. "You're late, Cas. I've been here for half an hour."

"My business here is not with you," Castiel told the hunter flatly. He broke eye contact with Dean to look around the restaurant for any black eyes, and inhaled deep, searching for any faint whiffs of sulfur. Nothing came up, and he frowned impatiently. "I came to meet with Crowley. He has information for me regarding certain demonic plans being made to move against Heaven."

From his perch behind the wall, Gabriel could practically hear the shot hitting Dean square in the heart. He only flinched but a moment, and when he recovered, the smirk wavered as though attempting to ice dance while spinning china plates on the end of sticks. "Yeah, well… haven't seen him," Dean said with a shrug. "But… since he's not here yet and I am, you want to come sit? …We've got Black Jack at my table."

With a heated sigh, Castiel looked over at the table and considered the offer. The gears in his head turned so loudly that Gabriel harboured earnest surprise that they didn't go raising a damn zombie army — but, finally, he quipped, "Fine," and he and Dean sat down. A silence settled in while Dean poured Castiel a shot, which promptly disappeared down the angel's throat; Dean poured Castiel another one, and so on for six more before he just turned the glass upside down for the time being.

"Guess there's no law against drunk flying in Heaven," Dean said drily, giving Castiel a once-over and another smirk. This one seemed more stable than its predecessor, but something that looked off in Dean's eyes, something that Gabriel couldn't quite put his finger on. Castiel tilted his head again, and Dean attempted to clarify: "Just… you hit the whiskey pretty quick there, Cas."

"That whole bottle would not even intoxicate me," Castiel said, voice devoid of emotion and face even more stoic. Muttering various curses to himself Gabriel looked his brother up and down, for any sign that this was affecting him in some way, besides making him shut down and be difficult. All Castiel offered him was a thoughtless tapping of his finger against the shot glass's bottom. More silence followed, as though they were afraid of interrupting someone else's conversation by having their own. Too wrapped up in their own thoughts, they didn't even look at each other — which was decidedly not what Cupid had promised would happen when he'd talked Gabriel out of using love potions on the two of them.

Yeah, 'You won't be able to keep the spark from igniting, just put them together and true love will take its proper course — but make sure they kiss so the magic can take properly,' my ass, Gabriel mused, plotting all the things he would do to Barachiel if this work amounted to a big, fat lot of nothing. He hadn't had a good Wes Craven marathon in too long, and Cupid needed to meet Freddy Krueger sooner or later.

Finally, they locked gazes again — storm green on Arctic blue, and the air between them smouldered like the white ashes of a fire. Both of them had pointedly neutral expressions, but their eyes gave them away: pain, confusion, and self-loathing sat under Dean's (Because that's so different from normal; Gabriel sighed), and Castiel's revealed, in addition to the blatant confusion, a wounded sense of security and an impatience with the way his vessel and his fall had made him start to feel things (which Gabriel guessed that he couldn't begrudge his brother; emotions were tricky, even if you'd had time to get used to them). Neither spoke. They looked away from their staring contest, Dean glancing at a waitress carrying a tray of desserts and Castiel once again doing a sweep of the place to look for Crowley. He turned his eyes back to Dean before the hunter had taken his off the triple-layer fudge cake.

"You look good, Dean," he whispered, so that none of the other patrons could hear him say it (and even Gabriel had to strain to hear it). Looking into his brother's mind, Gabriel saw that Castiel took his lowered voice as a kindness, a way to protect Dean from attracting unwanted attention. Based on the way Dean's brow knotted, saying that he disagreed would have been an understatement. "I've been watching you, and Sam," Castiel explained, a bit louder this time (though obviously keeping his voice down again so as not to make people ask questions about the angel sitting at the table). "You've done good work — especially with keeping Rebecca safe."

Dean wrinkled his nose. "Who the Hell is Rebecca? …Oh, wait, you — you mean Becky?" Castiel nodded. "Well, what were we supposed to do, Cas? Ditch some pregnant chick — some single pregnant chick, who barely knows how to do anything without turning it into, 'And then Sam and Dean had gay sex in the ass all night long' — and leave her by herself when there's all kinds of monsters that could get at Chuck's baby?"

"My Father's new daughter is of great import," Castiel agreed, a hint of vitriol slipping into his voice. The subtleties of his vocalizations weren't lost on Gabriel — but Dean seemed to miss something essential:

"Oh, yeah, she's friggin' fascinating." He poured himself another whisky, but this one wound up in his (heretofore empty) water glass instead of the shot glass. Dean didn't even wince at the long sip he took. Taking a cue from this, Castiel snatched up the bottle and poured himself a large glass as well. "I tell you, there's nothing that gets my panties in a twist more than the twenty-first century Jesus." Castiel only shrugged in response to this, and Gabriel couldn't blame him for that. What was one meant to say when one's ex-lover was flaunting the pink lace he had on under his jeans? Dean's eyes darkened, and he emptied his glass of its contents in a series of rapid-fire gulps. Slamming it back onto the table, he announced, "Alright, you evasive bastard. You asked me to meet you here so we could talk and patch things up, not so we could drink and play 'who can go the longest without blinking'—"

"I did no such thing, and I could go without blinking longer than you could," Castiel commented off-handedly. "My eyes have a greater tolerance for dryness—"

Dean thumped his hand on the table next to the glass. "Not the point, Cas!"

Narrowing his eyes, and speaking in a low, dangerously unruffled voice, Castiel asked, "What is the point you wish to make, Dean?" The implication was clear to Gabriel — and, judging from the little flare of his nostrils, Dean picked up on it too: Do you even know what your point is?, Castiel had inquired without verbalizing it. And, moreover, why should I care?

"My point is…" Dean cut himself off, slipping into a pause with a heated sigh as he realized that his voice had raised without his consent, and that they'd gotten more than a few heads to turn and start staring at him. "…Dammit, Cas, you don't have to lie and tell me that I look good. I don't look good right now; I look ragged, and worn down, andfucked. up. And you know what? I feel ragged, and worn down, and fucked up. Work's been going absolutely insane since we iced Lucy, I don't even know where to begin to tell you about it — not to mention that Crowley and Bela keep hounding on Sam and I can't make them stop.

"I can't do crap for my son, either, not since his mom's had her Jesus-pregnant girlfriend move in with them — and I really could have used some fucking support, but… who am I supposed to get it from? Jo and Ellen are dead. Bobby's busy trying to get his soul back. Half the other hunters won't talk to me, the other half still want to send Sam packing back to Hell, and I can't hustle enough pool to buy Rufus a friggin' bottler of Johnnie Walker Blue every time I want to fucking talk to someone. And where've you been?"

"In Heaven," Castiel said flatly, tapping his fingers on the table and glaring so hard he could have bored holes through Dean's impossibly thick skull. "The same place I told you I would be."

"Yeah, and what were you doing there, exactly? Sweeping up the other angels' messes? Cleaning up after them when they cast you out? When they hunted you and tried,several times, to kill you bloody? I mean, no offense meant, but… what the Hell, Cas—"

"My family needed me," Castiel snapped. His eyes flashed, and then, for the first time, they darkened to match Dean's. More often than not, Castiel looked anything but dangerous to Gabriel — but he couldn't have said now that he'd have been pleased to meet his little brother in a dark alley. "Chaos had taken over in Michael's absence. My Father needed one of His most faithful to bring everyone back together. Of all people, you ought to be able to understand that."

Dean paused, knowing that Castiel had hit him right where it hurt the most — and where it was impossible for him to deny the angel's claim. He'd given everything for his father, for his brother; he'd cleaned up both of their messes, and dealt with John Winchester's worst on Sam's behalf; he'd died, been to Hell, endured Alastair's razor, and had to confront parts of himself he wanted to lock away and forget about — all for his brother, to keep him as safe as possible from the oncoming Apocalypse. "Cas, I…" He started, stopping himself again as he tried to find the right words (and probably, Gabriel thinks, ones that won't make him sound like some simpering teenager on prom night). "…Cas, Ineeded you," came up as though the words had been dragged there, kicking and screaming.

Castiel downed the rest of his whisky and narrowed his eyes. "What," he said. "Lisa wasn't enough for you?"

All the other noise of the restaurant seemed to die out, for a moment, and the silence that followed crackled with an electric burn; even Gabriel's eyes widened and spine stiffened at the impact of that jab. He held his breath, waiting for the screaming tantrum that Dean was sure to have, that had to be coming, that would come, by hook or by crook, because that was how Dean Winchester dealt with the problems he couldn't shoot, behead, salt and burn, or shove a stake through: he yelled at them until he went blue in the face.

The screaming never came.

First, Dean tightened his hold on the glass until it broke, several shards embedding themselves in his hand. Castiel tried to point out that he was bleeding, only for Dean to snap, "Leave it." They locked eyes. How the two of them had yet to hurt anyone else escaped Gabriel entirely, and had he not needed to see how this played out — Angry sex is still an option, he attempted, against his own better judgement, to convince himself. They could still go fuck each other stupid in the bathroom… — he would have fled just to protect himself. The silence had within it so many unasked questions and missing smart-ass responses to them: had Dean really just done that. Yes, he had, and what the fuck was Cas going to do about it. Did Dean honestly want to know what Castiel could do about it. Why was Castiel still talking instead of doing something…

Instead of saying anything at all, Castiel stood up. Dean scrambled to his feet soon thereafter — and, for this move, Castiel punched him in the face, knocking him back into an empty table. Coming around from it, Dean pawed at his nose, looked down at his hand and saw the blood thereon. And he stared at Castiel, silently demanding to know what the angel thought that he was doing. Castiel clenched his hands in white-knuckled fists and rubbed his lips together.

"I should have known that you'd be juvenile about this," he told Dean, anger lurking just below the surface of his words, threatening to bubble up and only being curbed because, for all Gabriel's little brother was a difficult shit, he knew better than to use the full extent of his powers around civilians. "If Crowley ever does show up, let him know that I'll reschedule."

Without another word, Castiel disappeared from the restaurant, leaving Dean where he'd fallen on the floor. Gabriel didn't stick around to watch Dean fending off the waitstaff's offers of assistance. Getting caught now would have meant very, very bad things for his ability to continue doing as he pleased.

Maybe getting these two back in bed wouldn't be suck a cake-walk — but still… it needed to be done.


	6. Turn Around, Bright Eyes

In theory, Becky knew better than to go out on her own after dark, park her car three blocks away, and forget her anti-possession amulet in her Miata's cup-holder. In practice, however, Ben was staying over at a friend's house for the night, Lisa hadn't yet come home from teaching her kickboxing class at the rec center, and after Dean's foul mood and abrupt departure from their Christmas celebration, Becky hadn't felt like calling Sam to come escort her out was the best idea. She'd just had a craving for tomatoes and the spinach pies that they sold at her favorite market in Cicero's so-called "downtown" area, and she'd needed them now; it wasn't as though she was trying to infiltrate some government office, or go rock climbing, or do anything else to upset the baby she carried with her. And, besides, demons had other things to do than stalk her.

While this was all very true, it was also a fact that there were more demons than Becky had counted on.

Shouting a goodbye to Mister Atkinson behind the counter, Becky slipped out into the streetlamp-illuminated evening. With a broad grin on her face, she beamed up at the full moon and started the walk back to where she'd parked her car, over on Maple Street. This hadn't been such a bad idea, really, she thought to herself, smile growing as the navigated the sidewalks and the salt thereon. (For all she had to be careful not to get it in the house, she could at least be grateful for the fact that there wasn't any more black ice to deal with.) She walked past Cherry Street without incident, and Willow passed in a similarly uninteresting fashion; had her thoughts strayed beyond her own musings she might have noticed the black coated figure trailing after her, but instead, Becky allowed herself to get wrapped up in pondering what to make for dinner the next night.

As she rounded the corner of Main and Maple, Becky continued not to notice the person behind her — but she did feel the sudden drop in temperature that made the alley feel more like a meat locker. That could have meant plenty of things, she knew from reading Chuck's books, but whether it meant ghosts, or demons, or something else, Becky couldn't be sure. Her back and shoulders tensed and her next steps were slow and measured. A woman dropped off a fire escape in front of her — Becky's screamed echoed through the alley like breaking glass and nails scraping down a chalkboard — she stumbled back into the hold of the figure in the black coat. He grabbed her around her upper arms. Her bags clattered to the ground and, though she tried to worm out of his grip, this only made her feet slide out from under her.

"Well, won't you look at this, Stephen?" the woman purred, sauntering into the nearest beam of lamplight. Her chestnut hair was cut in a fashionable bob, and when she looked up at Becky, she showed her black eyes. Demons, then — Becky shivered, and gulped. This was decidedly Not Good. "We caught ourselves a Virgin Bitch…" With a pensive hum, she closed the distance between herself and Becky, sliding a thigh between Becky's and running the backs of her fingers down Becky's cheek. Their touch was like ice cubes coated in oil. "Christ Bearers shouldn't be out by themselves after dark, little girl. You could get in a whole lot of trouble — you're just lucky we found you and not someone with… untoward intentions."

"My companion is exactly right," said the man (Stephen; no doubt, also a demon). "You could've found yourself in the path of a werewolf tonight, missy, and then where would we be? …Petra? Where would we be if she'd gotten in the way of a werewolf on a night like this?"

"Why, we'd have ourselves one mutilated Christ Bitch," Petra replied with an off-kilter smirk. "And then we wouldn't see our Lord and Master ever again. …And wouldn't that be such a tragedy?"

"You guys obviously have no idea what you're talking about," Becky snapped, trying to get her feet on the ground again and wriggling in Stephen's hold. "Lucifer's not your God. You can raise him again, but all he's going to do is kill you! He thinks you're basically trash!"

"Oh, isn't that sweet, Stephen? She thinks that she knows anything about Lucifer just because that's a holy spawn in her womb."

"I do know things about Lucifer!" Becky protested, righteous indignation flaring up inside her like fireworks. "My baby's father was a prophet, and I was there while he was writing the Winchester gospels, and I know things about Lucifer, okay? Real things! Like how he just sees you all as dirty means to an end, and—"

Petra's hand hit Becky clear across the face, leaving a bright red print on her cheek. "You shut your mouth about Lucifer, Princess."

"Yes, precisely," Stephen added on, hissing and spitting like a territorial cat. "Didn't anybody ever tell you that little ladies should be seen and not heard?"

"They did, but it is so for crap." Becky rolled her eyes as she drawled her explanation to the demons. Honestly, why did they have to be so old-fashioned and not at all like Crowley and Bela? Why they didn't just get with the program was beyond Becky entirely. "Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean my opinion counts for less, and my girlfriend is a kick-boxer, and we're friends with Sam and Dean, so don't even think of trying anything to me because I might be pregnant, but they will wreck your shit, and—"

The sound of two shotguns firing cut Becky off, and stunned her enough that she didn't even think to scream. Groaning, Stephen released her and crumpled to the ground; Petra went down in a high-pitched screech — and, trumping the demons' noise-making, a quavering voice shouted a string of Latin words throughout the alley. The meatsuits convulsed as the black smoke rushed out of them — but, once it left, so did the lights in the human hosts' eyes, and the bodies just laid there, bleeding. Trembling, Becky looked up and called into the alley:

"Hello? …Mister Singer, is that you? …And even if it's not, I really appreciate you saving me, whoever you are? …Do you like marzipan?" Two sets of footsteps approached her, and Becky's nervous, darting eyes lit up when the figures entered a halo of light — one heavy-set and goateed, and the other tall and thin (and holding the book from which he'd been reading the exorcism). It had been a while since she'd seen them last, just over a year, and it had done something to them — made them harder, maybe, and definitely thinned one out some — but she never forget a face from a convention.

"D-d-don't panic, okay, ma'am?" Barnes told her, holding a hand out (and, judging from how his arm shook, he was closer to panicking than she was). "We d-don't mean t-to upset you or anything—"

Rolling his eyes, Damien chided his lover — "Amateur" — and took over, his voice swaggering on its own: "Hey, lady. You and the baby doing all right? Sorry if we startled you — hunting demons can get pretty… hairy."

"Oh, I know," Becky said brightly, crouching to pick up her bags. "Like that time when Sam and Dean had to fight one on an airplane, or when they met that demon in Ohio and Dean didn't want to kill her, or all that stuff with Ruby, or Sam drinking demon blood—"

"Wait a minute," Barnes interrupted. "Sam's drinking demon blood?" Brow knotted up, he looked down to Damien, as if asking, How am I supposed to integrate that into my LARPing?

"…Oops?" Becky said with a shrug, by way of apologizing. "I'm so sorry — I didn't mean to spoil you guys or anything, I just — I kind of forgot that not everybody's read the rest of Chuck's manuscripts, but… Sam isn't drinking demon blood anymore. It was just Ruby leading him astray. But he made it better when he and Dean saved the world from the Apocalypse."

Becky half-expected to be skewered for turning into a one-woman spoiler factory when she got excited — but, instead, Damien only tilted his head and looked her up and down. Pointing at her, he got something in his eyes that resembled recognition. "You…" he said. "You're the girl from the convention in Ohio — the one who got to hang around with Mister Edlund… What're you doing out here?"

"It's kind of a long story," Becky said, unable to help herself from sighing. "I mean, like… really long, and it's like, one minute, I'm pregnant, and the next, Lisa's having me move in with her—"

"Like Dean's Lisa?" Barnes asked. "'Best night of my life, Ben is not your son' Dean's Lisa?"

"I said it was a long story, didn't I?" When both of them nodded, Becky pointed at her car. "Anyway. My car can fit all of us… and you guys have probably been eating diner food for a while, right?" Both of them nodded again; Becky grinned. "Then why don't you come back to mine and Lisa's place? I'll make dinner."

A moment of awkward silence passed between the three of them as Barnes looked down at Damien and Damien looked up at Barnes; finally, Damien emitted a high-pitched squeal (at which Becky couldn't help raising her eyebrows). Interpreting for his boyfriend, Barnes chimed, "Oh my God, we'd only love to!"

Becky beamed at the hunters, and led them to her car.

Ever since he'd come back up to Heaven from Earth, Gabriel hadn't left the couch, stopped drinking his wine (which was potent, as he'd gotten Joshua to make it for him, and never ran out), or turned on something that didn't have Casa Erotica somewhere in the title — and, really, Barachiel had nothing against the Casa Erotica films… Well, true, he thought that the first one was rather silly, and that the second one didn't really have much of a plot, and that there was no way the lesbians in the seventh had really fallen in love with each other at a monster truck rally wherein they'd apparently been the only ladies — but besides that, the knotted up frown on his face had nothing to do with Gabriel's choice in viewing curiosities and everything to do with the fact that Gabriel looked like somebody had just run over his puppy, killed Sam Winchester (for good, this time), ripped out Gabriel's heart, stomped on it with spiked stiletto jackboots, sauteed it with mushrooms (non-hallucinogenic ones; Gabriel hated non-hallucinogenic mushrooms), and then made him eat it.

Which was to say that he looked not very well at all. (Barachiel's superiors in the third sphere had always told him that he had an over-fondness for dramatic analogies; he had no idea what they meant by that, and he also had no idea how he was supposed to avoid dramatics when Gabriel looked the way he did now.) With a sigh, the Cupid leaned down, resting his head on the archangel's shoulder and watching as the two women on the screen shared a passionate embrace. "Gaaaabey?" he inquired, a sing-song lilt creeping into his voice. "You wanna taaaaalk about it?"

Gabriel huffed. "No."

So they didn't talk about it, at least not yet. Once Barachiel protested that there was no way the redheaded lady could bend her legs like that, Gabriel grunted and shoved him off the sofa… so he'd gone to make cookies instead — sugar cookies with pink sprinkles, cut out in the shapes of unicorns and hearts. With a snap of his fingers, Gabriel made all of them look like the sexual parts of human anatomy; Barachiel whined and made a chocolate cake instead, but not without stomping back to his kitchen and causing an enormous fuss about how Gabriel didn't respect him. "We're friends, Rocky," Gabriel explained, snapping more than Barachiel liked at all. "Of course I don't respect you."

As he made his little fondant roses, Barachiel sighed and assured himself that just because Gabriel was being mean right now, and just because Dean and Castiel had shouted at each other, didn't mean that all hope was lost. Curving the sweet, sticky substance into little petals didn't really provide any of the answers for how to put matters between the bickering lovebirds right that Barachiel had wanted to glean from his choice in activity, but it did get his mind off of things when Gabriel started yelling obscenities and cat-calling the TV. And, besides, even if Gabriel insisted that he didn't respect the Cupid, Barachiel knew better. "And, besides that," he muttered to himself, placing the last rose around his circular cake's perimeter and starting work on the fondant elephant he wanted as a centerpiece. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and people like me."

(On Earth, it is a common misconception that writers, comedians, and other artistic sorts of people get inspiration from the Muses, or from inherent genius, or from character's voices talking to them. In some cases, this is true; in others, it is a sign of underlying instability; in the case of the Saturday Night Live writers responsible for Daily Affirmations with Stewart Smalley, they'd had Barachiel sitting intangibly on their shoulders and telling them what he told himself to get through the day.)

As Barachiel finished up the cake, Gabriel barked a string of curses in no fewer than seventeen languages (including Enochian and Ancient Greek); the Cupid pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. "'Oh, look at me,'" he whispered, his snide, mocking tone kept low enough that only he would hear it, "'I'm Gabriel. I ran away from home to have blood orgies with a bunch of pretty Pagan ladies and I don't believe in saving myself until I really love somebody because my big brothers are dysfunctional.'" Despite his best efforts at keeping quiet (which were half-baked and practically nonexistent to begin with), Barachiel wrinkled his nose and started tossing his head around as he got further and further invested in his sardonic character assassination — and as a consequence of this activity, his voice got louder.

"'I have a crush on someone, but I don't like to admit it because crushes are for fourteen-year-old girls and even though I don't really have a penis in my true form or identify in any way as male over archangel, I'm a male-posturing stupid-head who's so overprotective of his masculinity that only Dean Winchester makes me look secure.'" He sniffed as though fighting back a sob (or possibly as though he'd smelled something awful), and deepening his frown into a parody of itself, he set his elephant on the cake. It looked perfect, but he wasn't done yet: "I like to hop around on clouds and abuse my sparkly archangel powers to make myself up exaggerated versions of society's female beauty standard for sexual relations, but I don't love any of them because they're not real, even though I gave them feelings because I'm mean. And I eat too much candy, and I don't brush my teeth, and I watch stupid porno movies when I know that they upset my bestest friend, and I stick my nose in everybody's business and act like it should just be finebecause, screw your plans and whatever else you love, I'm Gabriel!'"

(Barachiel's superiors had also tried to talk to him about being more open and forthcoming when he disliked someone's actions and behaviors. But that, he thought, would have been unnecessarily cruel, and he rather liked having the time to himself to do things like this.)

Given the extent to which he'd already decorated the cake, Barachiel supposed that he didn't need to put anything else on it, but even so, he started making a ring of chocolate icing behind the roses. And he went on: "I'm so blind to love that I'd rather torment the lucky guy my heart's set on by sticking him in a fake TV Land and putting him in an embarrassing Herpexia commercial and killing his brother over and over and over again because love isn't for archangels unless their name is Castiel, blah, blah, blah, look at meee. I'm Gabriel.'"

For all he'd only gotten a cake out of this rant (and certainly not his best cake), Barachiel sighed and smiled an earnest, relaxed smile. There — that made him feel better.

The smile fell away, however, the instant that Barachiel brought the cake out of the kitchen. He'd expected to find Gabriel doing obscene things to himself or the television… but, instead, he found Zachariah glaring at both Cupid and archangel as though they'd just suggested rehabilitating Lucifer. (Which wasn't really a bad idea, Barachiel thought. Maybe the Devil just needed some hugs.)

"You two," Zachariah snapped, waggling his fingers between the two of them in what Barachiel found to be an effectively threatening method. While the Cupid trembled, whimpered, and let his lip quiver, Gabriel just rolled his eyes; Thor had been a much more effective menace to confront, and even if he'd been wielding Mjöllnir, Gabriel still would've found Zachariah about as terrifying as a newborn kitten. "…Would you mind curbing the attitude with me, Gabriel—"

"Yes. Terribly so."

Zachariah snapped his fingers and Gabriel doubled over as though he'd just been kicked in the stomach; Gabriel snapped his and a large watermelon crashed on Zachariah's head. The Heavenly Secretary sighed, and frowned, wiping juice, seeds, and bits of fruit out of his eyes. Figuring that it was best to try and look like he was doing something productive, Barachiel set the cake on the table in front of the sofa and toddled over to the edge of Gabriel's cloud; crouching down and peering down at the humans' realm, he focused in on Lisa Braeden and Becky Rosen's apartment, smiling once more as he saw the two ladies, Ben Braeden, the Winchesters, and Barnes and Damien sitting down to a group dinner. Domestic bliss, for the Cupid, felt like someone had put warm, pink, fuzzy puffs inside his chest, and his cheeks flushed pleasantly as that sensation tickled around inside him.

"That was quite unnecessary," Zachariah pointed out.

"So are you," Gabriel quipped, "but no one's fired your dumb ass yet."

"This is hardly the time for jokes," Zachariah retorted, far too seriously for his current state. "Castiel is exceedingly late for his and Raphael's meeting with Kali regarding—"

Gabriel spit his drink everywhere and spluttered, "They're meeting with Kali?"

"In theory — except for the part where she and Raphael have been sitting in a relatively empty section of the Australian Outback with the Antichrist Jesse for over two hours and that blue-eyed pain in my ass hasn't shown up yet." Since even before the child Antichrist had exiled himself to the island, Australia had been a mostly neutral territory. Demons liked the heat, but not their native gods; other pagan deities weren't fond of much outside of Sydney, which none of them had the time to fight over; and the angels resented it because of the number of children who prayed, asking them to explain the Ineffable Logic behind the platypus.

Logic and adhering to it were the last things on Barachiel's mind as he piped up: "Castiel's in Indiana."

Rounding on him, Gabriel and Zachariah demanded: "Excuse me?"

Beaming, Barachiel beckoned them over and narrated: "See, he just showed up at Lisa Braeden's — and Becky's, but Lisa's the one whose name is on the mortgage, and…" Seeing the impatiently arched eyebrows he got from his fellow angels, Barachiel paused, gulped, and went on: "…So Lisa didn't know him, and Dean ran into the kitchen, but Becky looks like she's just going to die from happiness — because she's read about him in the Gospels, you know? And Sam… well, he just looks really uncomfortable, poor guy. …But I think Castiel's down there to help protect Becky's baby from demons."

In unison, Gabriel and Zachariah sighed, muttering, "Son of a bitch."

Neither commented on the fact that they kept saying the same thing at the same time. That might have made it more real.

Ever since she'd all but put him in time-out, Lisa hadn't seen Dean move at all from the little corner of the living room that she'd coaxed him into while Sam and Becky got this angel guy — this Castiel — on the sofa and talking. Dean kept his shoulders hunched and his arms wrapped around his chest, occasionally scoffing or slipping up and letting his eyes flash with a jealousy that matched his deep-set frown. Although she still didn't really know who he was, Lisa thought it was a point in Castiel's favor that all he did was arch an eyebrow at Dean and keep talking. More than once, Dean jeered, all but outright voicing his disapproval for something Castiel had to say, and each time, Lisa looked over her shoulder to snap, "Dean!" at him. God, he just needed to act like some petulant child over this, didn't he? Maybe Becky (and the hunter friends she'd brought home, currently leaning against the back wall with Sam) could be excitable, but at least they were handling this maturely.

"You're aware that you are special, Rebecca," Castiel explained (refusing to call her Becky, despite her insistence that, really, it was okay with her if he did), "and that the child you carry is special—"

"Yeah, I've actually had a question about that for a while now," Dean interjected with a sneer. "If we're all God's children, then what, exactly, is so goddamn special about Jesus? Or… Samantha Deanna Joanne Winchesterette Braeden-Rosen-Shurley?"

"It's just Winchester," Becky muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes. Not that Lisa could really blame her — they and Dean had been over the fact that they hadn't settled on a name several times, and that it upset Becky when he mocked her ideas, and that, yes, Lisa would have preferred one that wasn't such a mouthful but it nevertheless upsether when he picked on Becky… but he continued not to stop.

The glare that Castiel shot Dean was ice cold. "That common misconception is just a metaphor for my Father as the Creator of this world, Dean. A Christ has literal divine parentage, special powers, and an important responsibility to help all of humanity."

"And you're here to help protect… Jesus two-point-oh from demons so she can save the world from itself?" The angel nodded. "Uh huh, because you winged dicks are so big on helping us mud monkeys — why the Hell are you really here, Cas?"

Tilting his head to one side, Castiel furrowed his brow and said, "…I told you…" (at which Becky, Barnes, and Damien simultaneously gasped and squealed. Lisa wasn't sure why in the slightest, but she supposed that it probably had to do with those atrociously written books about the Winchesters).

"Yeah, well, I'm not buying that you're here with no ulterior motive," Dean grumped.

"I hardly need an ulterior motive. The Luciferian demons are converting more and more of their brethren to their cause, and even if they don't get him out again, they will come for Rebecca and her child. That cannot be allowed to happen."

For the first time since the angel had shown up, he and Dean locked eyes, and something in the air between them seemed to crackle. "Fine," Dean acquiesced, grunting as he finally left the corner. "But if you're gonna be here, then we're gonna set some damn ground rules, understand?"

Castiel shrugged; his expression remained impassive. "As you wish."

Becky's swooning was loud enough that Ben came down from doing his homework to investigate. As much as Lisa loved having Sam and Dean as guests, and as much as she enjoyed hearing their more entertaining stories about The Hunting Life, she wished that this could just be over now.


	7. You Linger Like A Haunting Refrain

The first thing that Sam did the next morning was give Ruby's old knife to Lisa, explaining that it could kill demons, and would help her, Barnes, and Damien keep Becky safe. The second thing he did was appoint himself the driver. Not even twenty miles into their move westward, toward where the last signs of Luciferian omens had been, Sam regretted making any decision that involved traveling in a car with Dean and Cas.

"Can't this thing go any faster?" Cas complained from the backseat (which he had stretched out on, claiming that sitting up straight in the Impala had made him feel confined, the last few times he'd ridden in it).

"Excuse us for not being able to zap around at fucking light speed," Dean snapped.

"All I am saying is that, for having such a reputation for being special, this car has yet to live up to my expectations in the slightest."

Dean reached back and smacked Cas in the side, hard enough to get his attention (and a disgruntled huff, which Sam suspected had been Dean's intention). "Maybe she's not a damn cloud chariot, or whatever you've been riding up in Heaven, but you keep your junk-less mouth shut about my baby."

Castiel rolled his eyes. "Of all people, Dean, you ought to know that I am far from, as you say, junk-less."

A pinkish twinge rose to Sam's cheeks, and only subsided once Dean and Cas had shut up and stopped picking on each other for a few minutes. All things considered, the younger Winchester still didn't understand why the angel had agreed to Dean's conditions against flying places, or why Dean had made them in the first place; all he knew was that he wished he'd kept Ruby's knife or stolen Cas's sword before they'd left. Those were probably the only things capable of cutting through the tension in the car.

Putting on his favorite They Might Be Giants cassette did nothing to help matters either.

"I don't understand," Cas complained about halfway through a song. "Why do these men wish for the construction of a birdhouse in their souls? That would be immensely uncomfortable for all involved, and the birds would be unable to reach it."

"It's a metaphor for being in love and dedicating yourself wholly—" Sam started to explain, only for Dean to eject the tape and shove in his copy of Alice Cooper's Trash, which picked up right in the middle of 'Poison.' Completely ignoring the Impala's other two passengers, Dean started singing along and banging on the air as if keeping up with the drumming. Head tilted in bemusement, Cas sat up and slumped against the driver's side front seat; he watched Dean as though he were watching a piece of performance art and politely trying (but failing) to understand. "…He does this sometimes," Sam eventually muttered, his apology for Dean's behavior and the angel's confusion unspoken.

Cas only nodded. "Your voice bothers me so much less when you don't use it to say redundant things."

In retaliation, Dean cranked the volume and belted: "I hear you callin' and it's needles and pins! I wanna hurt you just to hear you screamin' my name! Don't wanna love you but you're under my skin—"

"Is this a reference to what you people call sadomasochism?" Cas asked, his voice audible over the noise even without any apparent effort on his part. What he had to say paled, in Sam's opinion, to the fact that, ever so briefly, the angel's lips curled into the first smile Sam had seen on his face since before he'd gone to tussle with Lucifer.

Face a deep scarlet, Sam ejected the tape and replaced it with Alanis Morissette, at which Dean groaned: "Oh, come on, Sammy. This is chick music." Snapping more than he meant to, Sam reminded Dean of the golden rule: driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cake-hole — and, halfway through his protest, Dean was too distracted by glaring at Cas in the rearview mirror to protest. The hunter and the angel locked eyes for all of 'You Oughta Know,' and from what Sam let himself see of their faces, both of them had something to say to the other about… whatever not-relationship-because-both-of-them-said-it-wasn't they'd had.

And a while later down the road, after Dean got sick of Jagged Little Pill and agreed to compromise with Bon Jovi, since Sam liked their stuff and Cas didn't know enough about them to really care but found 'Living On A Prayer' acceptable enough: "Cas, pass me the Twizzlers."

"Did you know that there isn't anything even remotely resembling natural food in these?"

"Yeah, I did. Now pass them."

"You shouldn't be eating these at all, Dean. They have a high chance of contributing to the cancer you're already courting."

"Sam, make Cas pass me the Twizzlers."

Before Sam could say anything, the passenger side backseat window rolled down and the Twizzlers went flying out it. Dean's eyes widened and his face flushed red in frustration. "What the Hell, Cas?" he barked. "I paid money for those."

"Money from a stolen wallet," Sam sighed.

Cas shrugged. "I'm just trying to protect you from your bad choices."

As Jon Bon Jovi screamed about his lover giving love a bad name, Sam suspected that the only reason Cas wasn't getting a face-full of gas station coffee was that Dean wouldn't hurt his car just to piss off his ex.

This was going to be a longer drive than necessary. Sam chided himself for not putting that together as soon as they'd left Lisa's.

After a long day of traveling, the trio finally pulled into a state highway motel called The Mockingbird, where, unbeknownst to them, three separate parties were already waiting for them. Having seen his plot rejuvenated by Castiel's interest in the Virgin Fangirl, Gabriel had jaunted back down to Earth, complete with Barachiel's reassurance that, "oh, the couples you want to see always have some trouble at first. Some bickering is pretty standard, really. It keeps the story interesting and strengthens the emotional impact of the ending," and hidden himself in a shield that used his angelic mojo to emulate a chameleon. By the time the Impala pulled into a parking space, he'd already been following them for most of the night, and his perch in the nearest tree was almost comfortable enough on its own without him abusing his powers.

From that spot, Gabriel watched as the Wonder Brothers and their sidekick, Nerd Angel, climbed out of the car and made way for a room, all three having the hunched shoulders that could only come from spending too much time in a car with disagreeable parties… and almost as soon as his shoes hit the ground, Castiel started griping: "You really shouldn't still be upset about the Twizzlers, Dean. I already apologized and you got the money back from that game of pool—"

"Yeah, which almost didn't work, thanks to you—"

"You shouldn't have tried to make your brother seem so incompetent after all he's done — and, besides, you know how I feel about lying."

"So just call it manipulating the truth for Christ's sake! All the other angels do!"

"Would you two cram a sock in it and… just agree to disagree already?"

In unison, Castiel and Dean snapped: "Shut up, Sam!"

For a moment, the squawking lovebirds paused, and each one looked at the other — not their first mistake, in Gabriel's opinion, but certainly the worst they'd made so far. They seemed to recognize this tragic faux pas, at least, and Castiel grumbled, "Your voice is exceptionally more grating when you're patronizing us." (Gabriel rolled his eyes, just barely managing to silence the groan in his throat. Seriously: he loved his brother, in his own way, but referring to himself and Dean as an "us" just made Castiel sound desperate.)

With which the three of them disappeared into room 26. Gabriel sighed, leaning back against the branch he'd taken to resting on; he really didn't understand Sam's devotion to that idiot brother and trying to put his love life back in order. Oh, sure, Gabriel had his own purposes in getting the most emotionally oblivious angel ever and his green-eyed paramour together again, but those were entirely selfish: he wanted Castiel the Hell and gone out of his hair and his and Dean's relationship provided an effective means to an end. The only real outcome the archangel could see Sam wanting from this was getting Dean to be less of a jackass, but sex had never fixed that irritating personality trait before and Gabriel saw no reason why it would start.

Shrugging (and banishing the thought that, really, for all his voice wanted for some smoothing over, Sam got truly adorable), Gabriel figured he could just ask Sam about it the next time he stopped in for a visit; sighing, he snapped his fingers and magicked himself up a mai-tai. He had a social experiment to keep tabs on — and judging by Dean's audible-from-out-here scream, things were about to get good.

Crowley had waited in the Winchesters' motel room ever since he'd had Bela make a reservation for "three men, two beds; one will be exceedingly tall, one will be very grouchy, and one will look like a grown up choir boy." Patient as a bloody saint, she'd stayed with him, sitting at his side, on the bed they'd purposefully mussed up; she'd artfully tousled her hair and scattered her meat-suit's clothes around the floor with care that rivaled Michelangelo Buonarotti's. The gasp and subsequent shout of, "You're sleeping in that bed, Sam!" warmed the cockles of the space where Crowley's wicked little heart had once been. (He hadn't had a heart of his own for centuries — millennia, in Hell time — but sometimes, it felt ever so nice to play pretend.)

"Oh, please, do get over yourselves." He smirked at the Winchesters and their pet angel once the door had closed; his eyes glittered, and he added on, "No, really. Be our guest to it. My poppet and I just wanted to have some cheap thrills in getting your attention."

The angel's brow furrowed, and, leaning against the wall, he frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "…She isn't a member of the family Papaveraceae, or the plant kingdom, or a puppet of any ki—"

"It's a term of endearment, genius." Turning her gaze toward Dean, Bela chuckled. "Honestly, where did you find this one? He's adorable — you know, the whole of Creation doesn't hold that many humanoid creatures who rival your obtuseness."

"He climbed my hair and saved me from a doorless tower, what's it to you?" Dean's bag fell to the floor with a dull thud, but at least he showed them the courtesy of not whipping out a gun. "You two have five seconds to tell me what the Hell you're doing here or I'm exorcising your asses."

"Funny you should mention that," Crowley chimed in with a dry chuckle. "Exorcism's why we've come calling on you in the first place." Although he watched everyone's reactions (vigilance learned while under a rock, hiding from self-destruction took some time to unlearn, he figured), but in particular, the Crossroads King turned his focus on the younger Winchester most of all, watching as he almost flinched. Standing and pointing at his mark, Crowley explained, "Gigantor over here has a gift, one that everyone — myself and Bela, included — has just been ignoring—"

Dean looked from Crowley to Sam, and Sam just stood there, his unfathomably enormous self, trying his best to look innocently oblivious (a doomed endeavor, in Crowley's opinion; even with the widened eyes, childish pout, and even mix of shrugging and shaking his head, the ex-Boy King looked guiltier than Jack the Ripper amidst a pile of harlots' corpses). Finally, with a nod and an expression of grim acceptance, Castiel broke the uncomfortable silence: "Crowley and Bela mean for Sam to use his power over demons to kill or exorcise the Luciferians."

True to his close-minded form, Dean threw out every denial in his admittedly limited book: "But… Sam hasn't had his hands on demons lately unless he's been gankin' them — blood drinking's… it won't work and just…" He stampeded over to the bedside and, with an uncharacteristic limpness, tried to shove Crowley to the mattress; the demon stayed in place and shrugged, as if to ask what Dean thought he'd accomplish, carrying on like this. Instead of just answering and making everyone's lives easier, Dean grabbed Crowley by his suit's lapels and grunted, "You red-eyed son of a… You can't… What're you gonna do? Feed him any demon who disagrees with you and the Ice Princess over here?"

"That's a terribly gross oversimplification—" In an instant, Dean had a knife drawn and at Crowley's throat — not the infamous, demon-killing one, but a silver one that had been salted and sanctified, and that was enough to make Crowley pause, give the boy an apologetic smile. "In a manner of speaking—" Dean leaned further toward him, pressing the knife in enough to burn, if not enough to pierce the skin. "Fine! Fine! …No, we do not want him drinking demon blood — but we need him killing them. And when he and Lucifer separated, some terribly convenient abilities hung around."

"We'd be fools not to use them for the greater good," Bela added on, leaving the bed to relocate her panties. "It's all very simple: Sam kills or exorcises the Luciferians, we dismantle the movement and save Becky's Christ-daughter, and everyone but the one with child takes a weekend off for martinis and self-congratulation. …She can join us for the fun times, naturally. Just not the alcohol. Wouldn't want any—"

"He's not doing it!"

Turning to face Dean, Bela wormed into her top without bothering to put on the bra. "Your devotion is touching — have you even asked for Sam's opinion on this?"

Crowley smirked and tilted his head. "The lady raises an excellent point. …Weren't we, in this charming, post-Apocalyptic wonderland, meant to see a Dean Winchester who treats his brother like an adult instead of like a five-year-old who's pissed the bed?"

"I treat Sam fine, but why would you even think that—"

"Dean," Castiel interjected, "they have a point." The knife not only dropped from Crowley's throat, it hit the floor altogether; Dean turned on the angel just as quickly as he'd turned on Crowley — and before he could start rambling in inanities, the angel continued: "Lucifer's not a demon. Any residual powers from his presence in Sam's body would be angelic in nature. He could easily use them for good, rather than for—" Castiel cut himself off as Dean stormed out the door, and then concluded: "I'll just… go and get him back."

Once the self-righteous moron and his winged ex-lover had left the adults to their business, Crowley shut the door with a flick of his wrist. He looked up at Sam and said, without adornment, "It's a win-win situation, Sam. And you wouldn't even need to chug your go-juice. The malingering remains of Lucifer's grace would do the trick on their own."

Sam nodded, muttering that he'd think about it and could Crowley and Bela please leave now. Although he kept it to himself, he had to admit: it didn't sound as bad as Dean clearly wanted to think it was.

Castiel paid no attention to the door slamming behind him, or to the conversation that accompanied it, or to the archangel lurking in the tree; all he did was follow Dean. "What's the matter?"

"Fuck you, I'm taking a walk."

Castiel paused, both in the conversation and in his steps. He kept his voice low and his face serious, whispering: "…It is not for nothing, Dean, but I would prefer you not use that phrase unless you mean it."

Dean's eyes flashed like a flare gun shot as he turned on his heel. "What makes you think I don't?" he hissed, advancing on Cas. His scowl would have been the stuff of legends, had he or Castiel cared to record it for them, and had Gabriel not been downing his drinks as though eating popcorn at the movies.

Sighing, Castiel rubbed his lips together. His hands clenched into fists and, for a moment, it looked like he might give up and punch Dean. Much to Gabriel's disappointment, Castiel only snapped: "…You know what I mean."

"So what if I do?" Another opportunity for violence — Dean glared daggers at the angel before locking eyes with him and saying, "You know, who even gives a damn about fucking? Sam's gonna go back to playing The Exorcist, it's your fault that he's doing it, you soul-less son of a bitch."

(Gabriel shook his head and groaned, slumping back in his arboreal seat. For as much as he did enjoy watching the two of them go at each other like they couldn't decide whether to fight or fuck, some part of him wished that someone would just snog the other or throw a punch already. Preferably Castiel — little angel blue eyes could be vicious, when he put his mind to it.)

"My fault." Castiel repeated Dean's words with an incredulous huff, and the way his eyes darkened dared Dean to take a swing at him. As the two of them closed the space between their bodies, Gabriel leaned forward — they should've just made out already, he thought; they were practically grinding on each other as it was. …As much as they could while still having a few inches between them, anyway.

"You heard me," Dean snapped. For a moment, his brow furrowed in contemplation, rather than in fury, and he wordlessly grunted, just to keep things from getting quiet. "If you hadn't gone and stood behind him on that—"

"It was the only way—"

"—then Sam wouldn't have gone down there, Bela and Crowley would be off trading souls to get some pathetic Star Trek virgins laid, and I—"

"The world would have ended, Dean. Even without Sam, Lucifer would have had no trouble defeating Michael when he was inside of Adam—" Castiel stopped himself abruptly, at the sound of rustling wings and branches. Holding up a hand to silence Dean, he crept across the parking lot — only to be knocked on his back as a diminutive archangel lunged out of the bushes, aimed at his chest. "…Get off me, Gabriel," Castiel huffed, rolling his eyes.

Gabriel did so, fumbling more than a bit, and snapping on the way up, "You're not nice." So, instead, Gabriel slunk his arms around Dean's waist, yanked the man into his own chest, and nuzzled his cheek against Dean's chest; Dean wrinkled his nose and held his hands up in surrender, but remained silent (a fact that did not escape Castiel's notice, or take away the bright red flush that rose to his cheeks). "Oh yeah, see… I like Dean. He's not an asshole about… stuff. And junk."

Although he tried to worm out of Gabriel's hold, Dean could only stand by, helplessly mouthing, Cas! Help! Castiel sighed. He still didn't understand why a hunter of Dean's caliber needed saving, but he also didn't see a point in wasting any time. As he grabbed the collar of Gabriel's shirt, Castiel snapped, "We should talk to Bobby."

While Cas and Dean went outside to have their (ex-)lovers' quarrel, Sam just took up a seat on his bed, leaning against the headboard and reading a book, one of the Doctor Sexy novels he'd found kicking around the back of the Impala shortly after his brother and Lisa had broken things off between them.

Before he could even think about what was going on (much less what he'd need to do if he ever wanted to get Dean and Cas off his nerves, or why some sexy, but neurotic, doctor was making out with a patient's ghost), Sam had an archangel getting thrown through the open door, curling up behind him, and awkwardly turning him into the little spoon. He wriggled as Gabriel nuzzled at the back of his neck, trying as best he could to worm out of this position… and getting absolutely nowhere.

"You're warm," Gabriel announced, and immediately, Sam picked up the scent of at least five different liquors, the freshest of which smelled like apple schnapps. He sighed. "I like you," Gabriel continued.

"…Is this really necessary?" Sam asked.

Gabriel nodded and one of his hands stroked down Sam's chest. "Dean says you're supposed to keep an eye on me. I prefer this."

Sam generally tried to keep from hating his life unless it was truly desperate, and while being a handsy archangel's space heater paled in comparison to being a creepy archangel's meat-suit, Sam still stared at the wall as though asking if it might be so kind as to beat him into unconsciousness. Outside, quite unbeknownst to anything, Barachiel had taken up Gabriel's former seat in the tree, and as he watched the Impala head off into the night, he shook his head. Nothing could ever just go according to plan, could it?


	8. This Tainted Love You've Given

"You know, darling, there are far better ways to go about romancing a bloke." Crowley tilted his head, giving Bobby the best attempt at an innocent smirk he could muster while in the nude from the neck to the waist. Just for the sake of getting in the spirit of things, the demon pretended to struggle against the (sigil-marked, escape-that-wasn't-Bobby-permitted-proof) duct tape bounds on his wrists, with the salt-and-holy-water-coated chain that connected them to the ceiling, putting just enough room between him and the floor that, had he not been rubbing his toes against it, he'd have been dangling like some carcass in a meat locker.

(And, well, had he been able to get out of them, the fact that he'd been dumb enough to wander into a covert devil's trap meant that he'd not be going anywhere anytime soon.)

Crowley pouted, wiggling his wrists around with what little leeway the bounds gave him. "Have you even considered some chocolates? …Dinner and a film? …Flowers? I've always been fond of lilies, and they'd liven the place up a little. …Or how about some scotch? I'd like it without your usual junk in it, if you'd be so kind."

"What'd I tell you about talkin' when it ain't yer turn?" Bobby cupped Crowley's jaw, ignoring the growl of the Hell-hound he heard from the other end of the room as he leaned in to kiss its master. There wasn't anything the bitch could do; Bobby'd looked into salt, iron, and some Devil's Shoestring, just to make sure that Bruiser didn't go and get ideas. Not that it could get past the Devil's trap, or that Crowley wouldn't just tell it to back down. As though he hadn't heard his dog start voicing his distaste for the scene before him, Crowley reciprocated the kiss without any of the oily slickness that he had in making Deals, because that wasn't what he and Bobby were here for.

"I believe you didn't tell me that as much as you put a salted, silver knife to my throat and mentioned that it wasn't polite to speak without first being spoken to." From his spot in the corner of the sitting room, Bruiser whined, prompting Crowley to hiss a few commands at him in Infernal, the majority of which translated to, Sit. Stay. Daddy's getting lucky. Bad dog. "Besides, cupcake: I still have your soul... and I could just keep it, if you're going to get all moody and entitled with me."

The flat end of Bobby's knife smacked into Crowley's cheek; the little bit of holy water burned, but just enough that it didn't feel all that bad, considering. "Well, yer just jumpin' to press yer luck today, ain't ya?"

"You really should be nicer to me, kitten. We could always have this conversation Downstairs, if you like." Crowley smirked. He was bluffing, sure, but there wasn't any reason not to keep up the pretenses of the game, not when they were his favorite part, and certainly not when they got the reaction out of Bobby, which Crowley felt pressing against his thigh when the hunter leaned in to steal another kiss, a longer one and one that went deeper than its predecessors, as though Bobby needed to claim what was his. Like some puppy pissing on its favorite fire hydrant. "Or, it's always possible..." Crowley whispered, trailing off with an overly-pensive expression.

"What is?"

Crowley chuckled. He tilted his hips into Bobby's, grinding against him with an intent that didn't match what he had to say. "I could always drag you down to Hell," Crowley suggested, "and put some junior demon in your meat-suit. It's not as though we haven't got enough of them clamoring for a ticket topside, and if you think about it, it'd probably be better for me in the long run." He could have done that — not that he would have. Things like that worked with politicians and priests who got their hands all over little boys, but not for Crowley's favorite, and the kiss he gave reflected a kind of trust that was just unheard of in Hell. "Of course, Bobby... you could always give me incentive not to."

This time, Bobby smirked. He yanked off Crowley's trousers and his shorts, letting them fall around the demon's ankles. He dropped to his own knees, and a very pleasant intimate encounter might have followed, except for the interruption from two voices:

"Oh my—"

"God… DAMMIT, Bobby!"

The forty-five minute drive to Bobby's had passed in relative silence, marred only by the mix-tape of Zeppelin songs that Cas had begrudgingly agreed to listen to — but at the sight they wandered into, both Dean and the angel fell into a string of curses in a mix of English and Irate Winchester. Bobby looked up from his demon in time to see Dean's face turn a perfectly tomatoey shade of embarrassed. He looked from Dean to the angel — who, bless the idjit's heart (or whatever angels had in place of that organ), had quit speaking and taken just to tilting his head, attempting to figure out what, exactly, he was seeing — but Bobby found that words just failed him completely. Turning his eyes back down to Crowley, Bobby waited for Mister Eloquence to open up his goddamn mouth and start putting everyone at ease.

Crowley just arched his eyebrows at Bobby and shrugged. "Well, they had to find out sooner or later, love," he pointed out as though he was entirely unaware of the fact that he was naked as a newborn. "And, besides: better finding out from us than from Gigantor. You know how Sir Samuel the Tactless would have handled this."

Bobby gave Crowley a swift thwack on the back of his head. "You're not helping."

"...I thought that duct tape was an ineffective hold against demons," Castiel commented, as Dean stormed into the kitchen.

"Well, evidently, angel, you just haven't been using it properly. Have you and your Satanic sweetheart tried making agreements about rules before you spend a long, arduous night taking your Father's name in vain?" This earned Crowley another thump on the head, and a protest from Castiel that he did not engage in physical congress with demons. Over the increasingly tense air in the sitting room, Dean could be heard rummaging through the liquor cabinet, cracking open one of the many bottles of whiskey.

Bobby sighed, and looked to the hopelessly confused angel. "I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why you idjits just showed up out of nowhere?"

Castiel nodded. Getting down to business was probably the best idea. "...Your Hell-hound needs to go outside," he said. "He looks uncomfortable."

Groaning, Bobby left Crowley's side to let the mutt into the backyard; on his way back, he stole the bottle that Dean was feverishly trying to crawl into, more out of concern for the kid's liver than for the nonsense he muttered about not wanting to go and buy a whole new liquor store after salting and burning Dean's alcoholic corpse. Whatever these two needed from him, he thought, had better have been good.

"Why are you doing this?"

As much as Gabriel usually welcomed the sight of one of Sam's patented bitch-faces — not because they were endearing, of course, but because the frustration he caused the younger Winchester just warmed the spot where he should've had a heart — right now, he just didn't have the patience. From his seat on the bed, he looked up at the enormous man before him, and smirked. "Because I love the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and I've just always, always wanted to be a big, Broadway star — I'm very flexible… You wanna see my high-kicks?"

Sam gave one of his long-suffering sighs and flopped onto the mattress beside the archangel. "You've been spending too much time with Cupid," he said.

"I'm not going to agree with you until I start belting Evita." At this, Sam wrinkled his nose and tilted his head — apparently, Gabriel wasn't the only one spending too much time with one of his brothers. "Uh, how about no, Tall Boy? I'm not singing 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' to catch you up with what I'm talking about."

Shaking his head, Sam clarified, "It's not that. …I just never pegged you as a Madonna guy."

"I'm not," Gabriel huffed. "Besides, Webber and Tim Rice are responsible for that piece of work Cupid's been subjecting me to in between episodes of Glee and crying jags over the end of When Harry Met Sally, and Madonna's not even the best Eva—"

"Why are you doing this, Gabriel?"

"…Because you called me a Madonna guy. And you know how angels get about their honor."

"I meant with Dean and Cas."

Gabriel quirked his eyebrows, and he intended the smirk he shot Sam to cut straight to the Sasquatch's heart. The result looked more like a proposition to pop off to Rio de Janeiro for some wine and a moonlight tango — and all Sam could do in response was pull a befuddled, confused face. "I think it'd be surprisingly good for them, don't you know," Gabriel quipped. "Besides, aren't you sick of dealing with your brother's crap?" Sam had to agree that, yes, he was, but before he could qualify this statement, Gabriel continued: "And I've had it up to your eyes of Cas being such a difficult little—"

"Have you noticed that there are more important things to deal with?"

"Like this?"

Sam and Gabriel both snapped their heads up at the advent of another voice, and at the string of fucks, goddamns, I'll rip your throat out, you fucking bitch's, and other colorful turns of phrase that accompanied it. Grinning like the Serpent in Eden, Bela leaned against the doorframe — and, really, Gabriel could've sworn that the door hadn't been open like that before, a fact that made his expression jump from mischievous, if befuddled, to thundercloud-class glowering — and had with her what was apparently Stunt Demon Number 12. SDN12 was riding around in a scrawny, freckled ginger kid with angry-looking acne, who could've been the brother of Bela's meat-suit but wasn't any older than seventeen.

"Sam," she said with a self-satisfied smirk, "can I have some protection, please? I've already given him the no-smoking-out sigil, but... we can't let a stool pigeon go running now, can we?"

Nodding, Sam got to work, making sure the demon wouldn't get out — he got tied to a chair, put in the middle of a devil's trap, and surrounded by a ring of salt for good measure — after which he excused himself and took a walk. With a pensive hum, Gabriel joined Bela on the edge of the bed. "You know, you're a lot prettier than the last demon I met," he said, reaching over to stroke her hair.

This earned him Bela's hand clenching around his wrist like a vise. "Put this on my person again and I will keep you from ever growing it back.

Gabriel chuckled. "So you like it rough, do you?"

Bela rolled her eyes. "Don't you think you might make Sam jealous, carrying on like this?"

Gabriel flushed and utterly failed to make an excuse for himself.

Slumping down on the desk before him, Cupid set his chin on his forearms and looked up at Israfel with the widest eyes and the most piteous pout that he could muster. "Please, Izzy?" he asked, for what had to be the fiftieth time in the past half-hour. "We just need one little choir, and it wouldn't be for that long, and just… pretty, pretty please?" Grinning broadly, Cupid batted his eyelashes up at the Angel of Music; Israfel blinked once. Then again. His face remained impassive. "…Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeease?"

It wasn't that Israfel had no understanding of emotion, or that he didn't feel any affection for Barachiel… but he had a stack of paperwork the size of the Library of Alexandria, and looking down into his brother's eyes was not helping him get it done. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he sighed. "You know you're my favorite of our siblings, when Gabriel isn't being a bad influence on you," he said. "But really. I cannot simply loan out a heavenly chorus because he's decided to meddle in Castiel's life."

"But it's not about that!"

On the list of Most Skeptical Looks Ever Given, the one that Israfel gave Cupid ranked somewhere between the Virgin Mary's upon her visitation from Gabriel and the one that a now-nameless male Homo habilis gave his female companion when she suggested tying together the sticks and rocks he used to kill their supper. He wrinkled his nose as though he'd inhaled a whiff of something disgusting and his left eyebrow arched so high that it risked leaving his face — and, despite this, he couldn't help the hint of a smirk that tugged up the corner of his lips. "…So what is it about, then, brother?"

Cupid sighed, beaming up at Israfel in too similar a fashion to the way he beamed at young couples holding hands and Ricky Martin music videos. In a voice with the over-sugared, sticky consistency of cotton candy, Cupid said, "True love…"

That wasn't exactly a decent explanation of the situation, not by a long-shot — and, moreover, Israfel knew this without being pulled aside by one of their superiors for a lecture on exactly what he'd done wrong in allowing Cupid to have his way on this matter. Frowning, he slid a Choral Request And Loaning Form off the top of the stack and looked it over — it required a reason for loaning out any of his angels and their musical abilities, and judging by the stars in Cupid's eyes, he wouldn't be able to help with that. His intelligence tended to fall into more specialized realms and, besides that, he couldn't lie.

Brushing his hair off of his face, Israfel muttered, "Fine, Barachiel. …Just give me some time to get the paperwork done?" Cupid said nothing in response. Israfel glanced down at his brother — he hadn't said anything that would emotionally injure the little one, had he? — and, instead of tears, he got tackled into hug. Keeping his face as neutral as possible, he patted Cupid's back. "I love you, too," he acquiesced.

Stunt Demon Number 12, for all he'd seemed so hapless and breakable, endured a full 24 hours tied to the chair while Sam, Gabriel, and Bela waited for Dean and Castiel to return with Bobby. He sat through several rounds of Go Fish, strip poker, and one epic game of Never Have I that ended with the two supernatural participants nude and dog-piled on Sam. He listened to Bela's graphic details of everything she and Lilith had done to each other sexually, Gabriel's nauseating version of the events that had led up to William Shakespeare writing his sonnets (involving a threesome with the archangel and the only female meat-suit Crowley had ever taken), and Sam's blushing, verybegrudging comparison of sex with a werewolf to sex with a demon. He even handled Sam's drunk rendition of "You Give Love A Bad Name." Nothing got him to talk.

Even when Dean, Cas, and Bobby returned the next evening, all that SDN12 threw their way came in the form of insults, snark, and disrespect. And, as Sam would not stop pointing out, the hunters, the angels, and Bela were running on a tight schedule — "And... maybe it's getting to be time for. ...You know. Desperate measures." He always suggested this tactic without explaining his intention, and each time, Bobby glared, Castiel wrinkled his nose in pensive distaste, and Dean came up with some notion of what he'd do to his dick before he let Sam run wild with what he had to be thinking. Bela and Gabriel just sat off to the side, trying not to make nuisances of themselves for once, which was easier said than done. When she filed her meat-suit's nails, he snapped his fingers and turned them into talons. When he started preening in the bathroom mirror, she made him hallucinate that his hair had turned into tentacles. And so on.

No one had ever commended them for their grasp on the concept of restraint — but, to their credit, the only beings in the room who didn't seem to get bored with these shenanigans were Dean and Castiel. Even Sam had to give up and flop on the sofa, but the blue-eyed angel and the elder Winchester kept locking gazes and snapping at each other. When SDN12 finally spoke at all, it was just to inform the two of them that they needed to find themselves a secluded place, away from everybody else, and fornicate with each other until they lost the desire to make terrible decisions. While it wasn't quite a start in that direction, Castiel did tire of arguing with the uppity thing and, rather than continue, decided to make himself at home in the corner.

"You know, just a thought," Sam piped up for the seventh time, "but maybe we should go a little crazy here? In the interests of getting anything done?"

A silence followed this, and Sam sighed, bracing himself for the inevitable repetition of what they'd already said before. Finally, though, someone had something else to add to the conversation: "You're not using your psychic crap, okay?" Dean snapped. "So just drop it already!"

"It wouldn't have to be—"

"And I'm not doing anything to make him squeal, so you can fucking—"

"Dean! He knows something—"

"Oh yeah, because now's a great time to just start believing Bela!"

(Bela furrowed her brow and looked to Gabriel. "He does remember that I'm right here, doesn't he?" she whispered.

Gabriel shrugged. "Doubt he cares, really."

"Typical Winchester behavior. Here I was hoping one of them would've grown up during the Apocalypse.")

"All I'm saying, Dean, is that it could get us to move a lot faster if you'd just... splash some holy water on his face or something. Get some salt and a silver knife. Anything—"

("Yeah," Gabriel muttered. "Because anyone who learned torture under Alastair's razor is really going to just stop at the kid stuff."

"He's pretty," Bela agreed, letting her eyes run up and down Sam's body. "But he really can be such an idiot.")

"I am not going to do anything just to—"

What happened next almost made time slow down; Dean didn't even notice it happening until he saw the angry, flashing light out of the corner of his eye and heard the thud of a chair and a corpse hitting the ground. He whipped around to face where they'd previously had a prisoner. Castiel stood over the body and looked down at it with impassive eyes and a stoic expression. He muttered something that Dean didn't really hear, about a ritual that the Luciferians were planning, one that would require sacrifices — two humans, a demon, and an angel — but the only thing that stood out to Dean was the gaping, bloody wound the angel had left on SDN12's head, the larger one that went from his navel to his throat, and the way that Sam's eyes darkened and wouldn't go anywhere else. ...Oh, he was going to fucking kill Castiel.

"Okay — everybody out!" Dean barked. He locked his eyes on Cas, and when he saw the angel heading for the door, snapped: "Not. you, angel-face."


	9. Standing In The Light of Your Halo

Dean waited in silence until everyone else left the room, including the demon's corpse, which Bobby carried out because Bela and Gabriel had to work together to keep Sam from getting too close to it — and even then, he didn't round on Cas immediately. Instead, he stalked up and down the length of the room, hunching his shoulders and keeping his eyes on the floor, and all the while acutely aware of the scrutinizing glare that followed him, of the chair (and the ropes that no one had taken off it yet) scraping across the carpet as Cas mojo'd it back to the desk, of Cas wiping the blood off of his blade and the sound of him re-sheathing it — Dean turned, and thought that he might give the angel a piece of his fucking mind…

…until he noticed that the stains had gotten cleaned out of the rug, leaving it as nauseatingly seafoam green as it had been before salt, a devil's trap, and a gallon and a half of blood had gotten on it. …And everything looked like nothing dangerous had fucking happened. As though Cas hadn't cut that demon to pieces, let his insides get all over the place or let the blood drip off the blade for just long enough that Sam noticed it, that Sam got triggered and got that dark, desirous look in his eyes… And then there was Cas. Just standing at attention, head held high, expression as apathetic and unmoving as it had ever been before he'd come to fall. Not that Dean's stomach turned at that thought, or that he felt his lungs clench up because they might not want to keep working if Cas was going to just run back to how things had been before. It was just different, that was all. And freaking unsettling, when the only sounds in the room were his feet thumping on the carpet and his and Cas's breathing.

Dean shook his head and decided that Cas didn't deserve his time right now, and that he certainly wasn't going to agonize over anything. Angsting over an ex-whatever was for fourteen-year-old girls — and shit, Cas would probably just fuck off back to Heaven when this hunt wrapped up. Dean's footsteps pounded away the moments that passed without either of them addressing the other, and just when Dean opened his mouth to make some kind of noise, Cas snapped, "There's hardly any reason for you to attempt pacing a ditch into the floor. It only works in those ridiculous animated shows that you watch."

Brandishing his finger at the angel, Dean huffed. "You shut your fucking mouth about my Looney Toons, blue eyes. Unless you really want me to go and tell Gabriel about how much you like watching late-night reruns of Rock of Love."

Very much against his will, pink flushed onto Castiel's cheeks; averting his eyes to the floor, rubbing at the back of his neck, he scowled. "It intrigued me as an ethnographic study," he explained, "even though I still fail to understand why those women went to such extremes to earn pathetic tokens of affection from that human mess."

"Hey, man, don't knock Bret Michaels either, okay?" Dean turned on his heel and returned to pacing — the less that he had to look at Cas, the better. He couldn't deal with the way his chest had twisted and writhed since the angel had returned, and if he just kept his eyes on something else — anything else — then maybe the burning would go away. "Sure, fine, he's no Robert Plant, James Hetfield, or Lemmy Kilmeister — Hell, he's not even a Jon Bon Jovi — but Poison had some fucking solid tunes." Bristling at the scoff Cas gave him, Dean rolled his shoulders and shook his head by way of loosening up the muscles in his back and neck. It didn't help that much.

"Yes, I seem to remember one you liked about… talking dirty to me?" Castiel arched an eyebrow, and left the place between the beds that he'd occupied since killing their demonic prisoner.

Dean scowled and shook his head again, trying to find anything that he could say in response to that and coming up a little more than empty-handed. "I would've pegged you as more of an 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' guy," he bit out before he could stop to think about it. "Or is that considered too emotional back on Planet Vulcan?"

Tilting his head bemusedly, Castiel said, "…Star Trek is a work of fiction, Dean—" Dean cut Cas off, locking eyes with him and shouting that he didn't care about fucking Star Trek. "Forgive me, I must have misinterpreted." His tone hit Dean like a snowball to the back of the head, and something about it wormed down his back, giving him shivers, like when he'd been twelve, Sam eight, and under Bobby's direction, Sam had gotten Dean out of bed by putting ice cubes in down his shirt. Dean shuddered as he let his eyes fall away from Cas's.

"I mean," Cas continued, shaking Dean around and making him pay attention again, "I honestly can't say what I was thinking." Blushing against his will and hoping against reason that he hadn't been noticed, he finally aimed his gaze over to the door, instead of at Cas's junk, and tried to disguise this as simply stretching out after letting his shoulders locked up. While this did help Dean maintain some semblance of what little bravado he felt he had right now, it had the side effect of making him miss the dark-eyed, decidedly unchaste way that Cas watched Dean's t-shirt tauten across his bones and muscles. "After all, you are only the one who brought it up."

His eyes, Castiel silently assured himself, didn't darken with Lust — and this certainly was not behind the drying of his mouth, the tightness in his throat, or the way that the temperature room had apparently gone up several degrees. As an angel, he would have noticed even the most minute presence of one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the back of his mind — but still, he swallowed thickly. While Dean distracted himself with working kinks out of his spine and shoulders, Castiel loosened his tie and collar, undoing the top button of his shirt, trying (but failing) to take his eyes off of the strip of golden skin exposed between Dean's belt and the rising hem of his shirt. Off the subtle flexes in Dean's arms and legs. Off the way he grunted, off the way his face contorted when he found a particularly tense spot. Off the fading freckles, the hint of Dean's black boxer-briefs, and the little clump of fair hairs that trailed downward — all drawing Castiel's attentions and mocking him as Dean's low-slung jeans showed them off with pride to rival Queen Jezebel's. …This couldn't continue.

"W-what did you want to talk to me about, Dean?" Castiel implored, praying, despite its brevity, that Dean paid no mind to the stammer. "There's very little time to waste, and we have more pressing matters." Dean let his arms, and the ruse that he'd built with them, fall, and for a moment, all he could manage was staring at Cas as though he'd just sprouted tentacles and a second head. Again, though, he opened his mouth to speak and Cas cut him off: "Never mind. It isn't of import."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," Dean snapped, taking his first steps toward the angel. "Don't you think I'm the one who makes that call? You know… since I'm the one who wanted to talk?"

"You certainly haven't made it seem that way."

"What the Hell is fucking with you, Cas—"

"Of the two of us, I think I have more of a right to discuss your adulterous behavior—"

Dean held up his left hand and shouted, "There isn't a ring on my finger, you dumb bastard!"

Castiel furrowed his brow. Without meaning to, he leaned closer to Dean — who'd gone and brought himself close enough already — and tilted his head… Their lips hovered dangerously close and Castiel felt a tingling in his chest, a yearning to just go where their bodies were headed… But, instead, he pulled his head back and sighed. Kissing, he could infer, was not conducive to fighting. "…I'm right here, Dean," he said. "You don't need to raise your voice to me."

Only now did Dean notice that he stood barely a foot away from Castiel, getting into the angel's personal space the same way that he'd always told Cas not to do. Huffing, he took two steps back and shook his head. The gnawing sensation in his stomach didn't mean anything, he tried to reassure himself; the way his pulse sped up was just adrenaline from being in a proper argument for the first time since the angel had left him (since both Sam and Lisa seemed to think Dean needed space to work things out, and Crowley and Bela spent too much time being uptight and British to make it fun). It also didn't mean anything that his voice caught in his throat as he hissed, "Yeah, well, maybe I've got an important point to make."

As he'd done with so many human things before, Castiel took Dean's cue now and also retreated from their former physical proximity. He could have simply looked into Dean's mind and figured out what his charge wanted to discuss, but instead, he turned his eyes to the floor and muttered, "You wish that I'd never come to help you and Sam with this." It made about as much sense as any other possible explanation that came to mind.

Dean started to say something, but choked and dropped the thought after the first syllable. Shaking his head, he grunted, "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Doesn't change the fact that you're here now, or that we're a team that needs to actually do things like a team—"

"Well, it is not for nothing, Dean…" Castiel raised his gaze, a scowl tugging at his lips, "but this hardly feels like a team to me."

"What the Hell are you talking about? Of course we're a team—"

"It seems to me that we are more you and Sam — a team, as you say — and your… interloping angelic sidekick." Swallowing, Castiel looked away from Dean again. He didn't know what this was — the way his eyes decided to water for no apparent reason, and the way that his chest wasn't bleeding when he was certain that this sensation was that of being stabbed.

"What — No! Cas, man, seriously!" Dean stormed back across the distance that had sprung up between them, only stopping short of "You're helping us, and that means you're on our team. Maybe I don't like it, but have you noticed that we might be screwed without you?"

"I see. So, you are merely tolerating my presence in order to achieve our common goal." Nodding, Castiel supposed that that made sense, all things considered, and he shouldn't have expected any less. "Very well — as long as I remain here, I am on your team, as you say. When I have served my purpose, I return to Heaven and let you be. Are you amenable to this?"

Dean flinched, and paused a moment. Words failed him as he locked his gaze with Castiel's. "...Who said that's what you had to do?"

Rolling his eyes, Castiel parroted, "'Maybe I don't like it' — this would seem to imply that you would prefer it if I didn't overstay my welcome. And besides, my family needs me. The more time I spend here, the likelier it is that Heaven will be unrecognizable upon my return."

Looking Cas up and down, Dean searched the angel's face for any sign that he didn't mean it. Maybe Cas wasn't the type to go ha ha, just kidding, but leaving again? And sosoon...? "Fine," Dean sighed, backing away from Cas again, hunching his shoulders, and firmly intending to stay as far away from the angel as possible. "You know what just... That's just fucking fine. We'll save the Virgin Nutcase and you can just fuck off and have fun cloud-hopping, see what I care."

Castiel watched Dean go and couldn't help but wonder how many times they'd been here before, in some motel room that might as well have been the same as all the others, having some variation or another of this exact talk, neither of them cutting to the point because either Heaven told Castiel not to or because Dean just wasn't like that. Leaving would be for the best, he tried to reassure himself, since Dean and he apparently couldn't spend two minutes together without something between them erupting, without one or both of them pushing the other away — even when, once again, life as they knew it was on the line. It wouldn't have burned him to go and touch Dean; Castiel knew that much. But touches, he remembered, could be misconstrued too easily, and there wasn't any point to arguing with the inevitable anyway — not even when Castiel's hands clenched into fists and itched to connect with Dean's jaw.

He turned his blue eyes to the floor and wished, for a moment, that he hadn't cleaned up the mess of dead demon. Carpet had no concept of entertaining spectators, and Castiel truly didn't appreciate the fact that he could hear everything around them — the ragged rise and fall of Dean's chest, the pounding of both their hearts, Gabriel muttering surprisingly sweet Enochian syllables to Sam — and looking up at Dean again did nothing to help the way Castiel felt like his entire chest might explode.

It didn't. Instead, he started speaking as though his mouth and his mind had decided to sever all ties: "Death was right about you, Dean, do you know that? And Famine. And Belial-otherwise-known-as-Meg, too, for that matter. You are one of the most arrogant, selfish, swaggering beings in all of my Father's Creation — and what has it gotten you?"

"A pain that goes from my head to my ass!" Dean gave up, and went to his leather jacket to try and find his flask. But Cas rushed in first, snatching it, returning to his previous position, and downing the contents before Dean's hand had even gotten to the pocket. "Fuck you, Cas! You can't just spring shit like that on a man and steal his fucking whiskey."

"You keep using that word," Castiel huffed. He lobbed the flash at Dean, narrowly missing his head. "And you know how I feel about it."

"Yeah, well, I thought I knew a lot of things about how you felt—"

"Besides, I need something in order to handle your presence much longer—"

"I mean, sure, you've got your magical angel language of love that inexplicably comes up during sex—"

"Especially if we are meant to function as a team—"

"But then you said some things. And I said some things. And everybody said everything—"

"Because, at this moment, the two of us can't seem to do anything without arguing—"

"And you... you bastard, you just had to say that you loved me—"

"Which is to say nothing of the fact that no matter what I do for you, you continue to disrespect me—"

"But then I needed you and you were just fucking gone—"

"I had a life before you, Dean! For millennia. I saw the Flood, I saw Sodom and Gomorrah razed to the ground—"

"And I was alone, man! I had Lisa, sure, and I had Ben, I had that whole... suburbia thing going—"

"Yet you continue acting as though my world ought to stop in order to solve your problems—"

"But Sam was in Hell, Cas! And you were off doing God only knows what—"

"And when I do help you, you always find some way to make me regret it—"

"And you know, maybe it's just me, but somehow, I just don't see me and that peaceful, respectable lifestyle working out in the long run—"

"I rebelled. I fell. I killed my brothers, I was hunted, and I gave up everything I'd ever known to save this world—"

"Of all the folks I've had my dick in before, I thought you understood me—"

"Because you convinced me that it was worth doing—"

"I thought you could put up with me—"

"Because I thought that it might be worthwhile to take a chance on the bond we were supposed to have—"

"I know that I'm not perfect, Cas, but you were supposed to mean it when you said, 'I love you'—"

"And when all the dust settled, my sacrifice was nothing more than a means to your end—"

"And maybe I'm just dumb as a brick, but I don't see how disappearing on me counts as love—"

"Did you never even once think about how Sam could get out of Hell!"

"So maybe you should get explaining or I..." Dean trailed off into gobsmacked silence, and for the first time since the flask had hit the wall, noticed his position. Somewhere in the flurry of their raised voices, he'd crossed back to Cas. Or Cas had crossed back to him. Or maybe they'd just charged at each other like rams butting heads, but Dean guessed it didn't really matter, since either way, they'd come within a dangerous distance of each other. As close together as they could be without throwing a punch or ripping off clothes. Dean just stared at Castiel, at the unfamiliar shade of red he'd turned his face and the way he panted like some dog on a hot day, how slowly his face came to register, in his same old tight-lipped resignation, exactly what he'd just shouted at Dean.

Swallowing thickly, Dean asked, "...You want to run that by me again?" Castiel's eyes darkened, and he shook his head. "No, seriously, Cas. You want. to run that by me. ...again?"

"It isn't important," Castiel hissed. Even as the rage emanating off him subsided, his cheeks flushed scarlet. Weaving around Dean, he started for the door. "I'll replace your whiskey—"

Catching Cas by the elbow, Dean pulled him back. He jerked Cas's shoulder, spun him around, said, "Don't you run off on me, you son of a bitch. ...Did you really bring Sam back?" Castiel nodded; his blush deepened, but his eyes never left Dean's. So many questions lingered on Dean's tongue, but the only use his lips found was colliding with Castiel's. Much to his surprise, Castiel reciprocated.

They stumbled to the bed and fell into it as though the distance hadn't ever come between them. Grunting, Dean nudged Castiel back up the mattress, tugged him by the tie to a sitting position; he kissed Castiel as gently as he could manage, but the fevered intensity behind each clashing of lips was that of a dehydrated pilgrim finding an oasis. They clashed — each set of lips fighting to find its place and claim some dominance over the other; here, Castiel bit Dean hard enough to make the hunter groan and swat him on the head; there, Dean held Castiel's lips in place so that he could drag the kiss out, slow it down and get everything out of it that he could.

Castiel didn't ignore the fingers worming into his hair, or the hand curling at his waist, but he focused the better part of his attentions on Dean's clothes. The two layers of shirt came off all too easily, revealing the expanse of warm, golden skin. Letting himself sink headlong into the kiss, Castiel closed his eyes, ran his hands down Dean's shoulders, his arms, his chest, his back and sides. They fell to the button of Dean's jeans in time for Dean to pull back, his breathing heavy. As it calmed, he moved Castiel's hand to his thigh and whispered, "Why'd you do it?"

Castiel didn't answer, just tore the button open and kissed Dean again, slower, the way Dean seemed to want it, but just as hard as they'd had before. He didn't bite, just let their lips collide. He handled undoing his own tie, and the pesky buttons; he shunted his own shirt off onto the bed, the motions near mechanical as he kept his mind on Dean's lips, on making sure they were so bruised he wouldn't even look at pie for weeks. Castiel wanted Dean to hurt every time he took a drink, and to think of the angel who could kiss like this as the beer or liquor went down his throat.

Dean, for his part, just tried to breathe in as much of Castiel's scent as he could manage — the wet, sticky feeling of his mouth; the lingering taste of the Black Jack; that guilty twinge that shot through him every time he ran his tongue along the angel's teeth. Their hips collided just as their lips did, and Castiel maneuvered underneath of Dean, wriggling around, grunting and rutting, thrusting his hips up into Dean's, bending his leg and grinding his knee into just the right spot on Dean's back, the spot where he always carried the most stress. Dean moaned as the initial rush of pain hit him, then subsided into relief. Castiel nudged their bodies backwards, so that he rested against the headboard, and snaking an arm around Dean's shoulders, he pulled his hunter down into the deepest kiss they'd had yet. Dean lost himself in it. He didn't even notice that Castiel had taken off his shirt until he felt something rough press into his chest.

He leaned back. The hand in Castiel's hair trailed down the back of the angel's neck, over his collarbone and came to rest on his chest, over a large scar in the shape of an angel-banishing sigil. Tracing his fingers over the bumps and the fading pink of its lines, Dean felt a shock blaze up his arm. He hesitated a moment, splayed his palm over the center of the marks. "Cas—" he started, only to have Castiel jerk his wrist down to his lap — and not without reason, Dean found. Castiel's dick was already hard, which was to say nothing of the erection Dean himself had straining against his jeans; Dean let one hand rest on Castiel's shoulder and handled their zippers. He curled his fingers in the waistbands of Castiel's briefs and trousers, fully intending to just yank them down and head into the action...

But Cas didn't let the kissing go that easily. His knuckles pressed into a tight muscle on the back of Dean's neck, urging him deeper. He kissed Dean deeply and waited until the oxygen was almost entirely gone from Dean's body before he separated them. Breathing into his charge's mouth, he said, "You were alone."

Dean hesitated, seeing stars. "...what?"

"You were alone," Castiel repeated, giving Dean a smaller kiss. "Without Sam. And you couldn't open up to Lisa, and I thought you..."

Dean nuzzled against Castiel's cheek, and then his neck. He kissed the pulse point over his angel's jugular, tenderly at first — and then biting, and sucking, just enough to leave a mark. "You thought...?" he whispered against the red spot, the one that would be an angry-looking hickey in the morning.

Castiel grabbed a handful of Dean's hair. "It's not important."

"You're thinking a lot of unimportant things these days, you know that? Is your head really in the game?"

Tugging, Castiel muttered, "I just couldn't leave you there like that."

Castiel reached for Dean's cock, only for Dean to bat his hand away. "No," Dean whispered. "Let me take care of you."

The angel thought of his and Dean's first night together, the love they'd shared on the motel bed before their tussle with Raphael. He nodded, and pulled Dean into another kiss.


	10. There's Got to Be A Morning After

When Dean woke up the next morning, it was with a mysteriously sleeping angel with one arm around his waist, cuddling against his back and making him the little spoon. The previous night's activities stayed clear in his mind, and not that he was complaining or anything — the sound he'd gotten when Cas had come had been the best thing he'd heard in months, and that face, and the way that Cas couldn't stop moaning his name as Dean moved inside him, the way sweat collected on his upper lip and tasted so... not sweaty — but there was just something... off about the whole thing. Whether or not they'd meant everything they'd said the night didn't cross his mind, but even as he felt Cas's lips between his shoulder blades, Dean had to wonder if Cas would just fuck off back to Heaven when they were done here.

Sighing, he looked at the other bed, where Sam was playing Gabriel's little spoon, and at the sofa, where Bobby looked... surprisingly lonely, for being asleep and only just having clued Dean into his relationship with Crowley. Well, if Bobby could manage the whole sleeping alone business, then Dean didn't see any reason why he couldn't.

"Dean," Cas grumbled, nuzzling closer into him. "What time is it?"

"Early enough to catch breakfast at most places," Dean grunted. "Let's get everyone else up."

"We can wait a minute longer, can't we?" Dean wriggled, but the hold Cas had on him was too strong — fucking angels. The scars on Cas's chest rubbed into Dean's back and his breath rustled through the hair on the back of Dean's neck. And it felt right, Dean couldn't deny that. It felt better than he'd felt in months — his chest didn't feel empty, his heart didn't feel broken, he didn't feel so lost, and alone, and completely incapable of keeping his shit together while the world around him got busy burning — but if Cas was just going to leave again...

Dean let his hand drop onto Cas's and gently nudged it down, off his stomach. Cas made a small, bemused noise, and Dean explained, "Last night was great, Cas... but it doesn't change anything between us, okay?"

Cas withdrew his hand and nodded. Rolling away from Dean, he muttered that of course nothing had changed, he hadn't expected it to, but that he still saw no reason to get everyone up just yet. "We're on a tight schedule," he explained, "but Sam and Gabriel are so much less grating when they aren't conscious."

Agreeing with that, Dean grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on.

Even though he could've simply angel-magiced himself clean, Cas called dibs on the shower — "Before Sam can make it smell like demon blood," he said — and left Dean twiddling his thumbs on the bed. Gabriel was the next one to rouse, and even though Sam followed soon thereafter and managed to keep his ass in the bed, something just struck Dean oddly. Maybe the littlest archangel was preoccupied with telling Sam what shirts of his did or didn't make him look like an art school dropout, but Dean was surethere was some kind of mischievous glint in his eyes. And, sure, granted Gabriel looked like that pretty much all the time, but Dean didn't trust the son of a bitch as far as he could throw him.

When Cas wandered out of the bathroom in only a towel, Dean knew this Something Is Rotten In The Motel Room feeling hadn't been misplaced.

Apparently, as Cas told it, the clothing he'd put on the counter — the trousers, tie, and office jockey button-down shirt — had disappeared while he'd cleaned himself. He had no idea where they'd gone off to, and he'd checked everywhere in the bathroom, but... he'd turned up nothing. Gabriel promptly started cat-calling, heckling, and otherwise relishing in the red twinge that rose to Cas's cheeks, but in true Castiel fashion, the blue-eyed angel just looked at Dean and sighed his favorite, world-weary, hopelessly confused sigh.

"Bobby and Sam are both considerably larger than I am," he said. (And, damn everything in the world ever, Dean had to snap his head back up to keep from staring at Cas's slender waist, the fine muscles of his abdomen, the jut of his hipbones… fuck, Dean would have to take care of himself in the shower.) "Could I borrow some of your clothes, Dean?"

Dean shoved his way past Cas to the shower, muttering, "Yeah, sure, fine. Pick out whatever you want. Still doesn't change anything."

The search for breakfast found the lot of them at McDonald's, and Cas wearing a pair of Dean's older jeans and a Metallica t-shirt underneath his trench coat. For as much as he'd bitched about the Twizzlers, he kept his mouth shut about the sausage egg McMuffin, and even stomached two of them himself. He said nothing about the music while they drove in the direction of omens that Sam could parse out from different news sources, following them as they jerked the Impala further up through Minnesota, all the way to Detroit and finally swerved down toward Lawrence.

And through all of this, Cas only told Dean that he was driving recklessly once. Worst part, Dean kind of agreed with the son of a bitch: he shouldn't have hit the curve as fast as he did, not when the road they were on had so much intermittent ice and barely any cell signal. One wrong move when he should've been handling the road better and they'd all end up in a ditch, with his baby wrecked all to shit and no reliable way to call for help, not even when Bobby caught up with them.

For a long stretch after that, Cas said nothing, except that he didn't want anything from the drive-through for lunch or that he thought maybe Sam should drive now. When the omens finally paused in Illinois, they'd been driving or attempting to get ahead of the demons for three days. The midday sun saw Dean, Cas, Sam, and Bobby heading up some snowy hill, surrounded by some snowy little trees, overlooking some snowy little neighborhood that was jam-packed full of demons, Dean jerked Cas to the side, away from the others (but not out of their earshot). "So... are we gonna talk about what's up with you or not?"

Castiel thought about this for a moment. "Or not," he said, his voice even, as though he was entirely unaware of the fact that he was throwing Dean-logic back at Dean.

"No, seriously, Cas: what the Hell is wrong with you today?" Trying to mask his concern and failing miserably, Dean glared at the angel and clenched his hand on Cas's wrist.

"Nothing is wrong with me," Castiel retorted. "Because nothing has changed between us — remember?"

Sam, for his part, just rolled his eyes and tried to focus on the task at hand. His brother and Cas could fuck around and debate who did or didn't love whom all they wanted; Sam just didn't want to end up as Lucifer's angel condom again. Or in any similar position, if anything could really be compared to that.

Maybe getting strapped to a comet, like Jimmy had said before of being Castiel's vessel.

Then again, Lucifer was more powerful than Castiel. Maybe having him around was more like having to listen to Dean and Cas trying to out-bitch each other for all eternity, while getting torn between ten different comets. ...Yeah, Sam thought as he hunkered down with his binoculars, that made sense.

Cupid watched over all of this with increasingly droopy, sad eyes, and a weight in his chest like someone had just shoved a boulder between his vessel's lungs and left it there. He flew behind the Impala, waiting for Dean or Castiel to kiss the other, or say I love you, or rip all their clothes off and have sex, or anything... but all they did was glare, and grunt, and huff, and be so stupid. And after Cupid and Gabriel had put in so much work, trying to get them back together...

And then they had to go and do productive things like demon-hunting, so Cupid wandered off and got a milkshake. It was chocolate, and delicious, but it didn't make him feel any better about the fact that Dean and Castiel had to be the stupidest, most stubborn, ridiculous, difficult creations underneath their Father's sky. Since cold didn't really bother him, Cupid sat down underneath one of the trees and started playing with a set of twigs that he dubbed "stupid Dean" and "stupid Castiel," muttering incensed dialogue under his breath:

"'Well, would you like to just admit our love and stop making everything difficult for everybody else, Cas? I mean, it seems kind of unfair to make Sam and Gabriel and Bobby and everyone ever put up with us when we're acting like big dummies.'

'Well, I don't know, Dean, I think that would make too much sense, and it'd mean getting off my high cloud and you getting off your high horse and both of us talking to each other like we don't have our heads up our butts and that would be difficult, what are emotions, I don't understand them!'

'You raise several good points, Cas. I guess it doesn't really matter that everyone who loves us wishes we would stop being miserable all over them just so long as we can act like idiots.'

'Exactly, Dean. And it definitely doesn't matter that we shared True Love's Kiss last night or that True Love's Kiss is always supposed to work or that we have Enochian binding sigils on our hearts because all that matters ever is that we get to cling to our big, fat, stupid, hypermasculine pride.'

'But I thought that you weren't even really masculine because angels have no gender, Cas! Jimmy had a male body until he up and died, but aren't you technically androgynous?'

'Why yes I am, Dean, but it doesn't matter! All that matters is that we get to keep our pride intact! Yaaaay!'"

And so on. And so on. And maybe Cupid didn't have a solid grasp on Dean's figures of speech, or on Castiel's, but Cupid thought that his ability to mimic their voices was unparalleled. (It wasn't, but thinking this made him feel better.) By the time Gabriel popped in by his side, Cupid had smashed his sticks into pieces and taken to simply sulking as though he'd gotten ditched on prom night. Curling his knees up to his chest, Cupid muttered about his intense dissatisfaction with the way that things were going and how frustrated he was with Dean and Castiel and why couldn't things just go according to plan.

"You're telling me, bro," Gabriel sighed. "And you know... I am so sick and tired of batting these two around."

"I just wish they'd see what's right in front of them! That was True Love's Kiss last night, Gabey! How could it NOT WORK?"

"You also thought a romantic dinner at an Italian restaurant would make them start fucking like bonobos in mating season."

Cupid frowned, and let his shoulders slouch. "I said that Lady and the Tramp was one of my favorite Disney movies of all time ever. You're the one who decided that—"

"This would be so much more interesting if we weren't staring down the chance that Belial's gone and gotten something right for a change."

"Gabey, if you would just listen to my ideas, then—" The bad posture got uncomfortable almost immediately, but Cupid maintained it in the hopes that Gabriel would look at him and see how utterly distraught he was.

Gabriel didn't. Instead, he took to pacing, and kept right on talking: "Because you know who's coming to dinner if she did, and jeez, is he going to be pissed at me."

"I know that Lucifer will be mad at you, but if you would—"

"And then he gets back inside Sam and we're all fucked ten ways to Sunday, because Michael's down there, Raphael doesn't care, and there is no way I'm not hopping the first comet to Pandora."

"Are you even paying attention to—"

"And Cas... well, I mean, he could try, but Lucy turned him into burrito mix last time, so I doubt we'll get that much."

Cupid huffed, then announced, "Gabriel wants Sam Winchester to screw him into the bed!"

"And, so help me Dad, bro — I'm not just going to sit around and wait for Lucifer to shiv me again. ...I'm gonna go get Lisa and the Virgin Fangirl. Hopefully, they'll get someone to listen to them."

As Gabriel made his way off in a flurry of feathers, Cupid couldn't help but roll his eyes. Irony normally wasn't in the Cherubim's wheelhouse, but it just seemed so wrong and appropriate that Gabriel would complain about people not listening to him. Cupid seethed so fiercely that one of the nearby trees briefly caught fire. So Mister Big Shot Mc-Hazel-Eyed Archangel Pants was going to go insist on being an individual, with no concern whatsoever for everyone else who was involved in this. Fine then. Cupid could manage on his own. Maybe, he thought as he headed back toward Heaven, he would just need to take things into his own hands.

"Cas, can you pass me the Doritos?"

Castiel rolled his eyes, looking down at the bag of chips at his hip. "They're very crunchy," he pointed out. "If there are any demons around, you might tip them off—"

("Yeah," Sam muttered under his breath, escaping both Dean's and Castiel's notice, "because your foreplay isn't going to do that anyway.")

"Between the three of us, we aren't equipped enough to handle an entire town of demons. Especially over Doritos. ...Have the Twizzlers instead." And, turning back to playing lookout, he lobbed the pack of licorice toward his charge.

"Oh, so now it's okay for me to eat my goddamn Twizzlers?"

("Well, you could just eat his dick and do all three of us a favor." It wasn't that Sam really thought a blow job would make Dean and Cas stop going at each other's throats, but maybe it would chill them out for long enough to save the fucking world. ...Again.)

"I don't believe that I said the Twizzlers were at all acceptable, merely that they are the lesser of the two evils in this situation." Castiel sighed, adjusting the zoom on his binoculars so that he could see into one house's second-story window. As soon as he saw the two demons having sex, his cheeks twinged the color of a raw hunk of salmon. "Also, I don't know why you bought Doritos in the first place when you knew that we were going on a mission that required stealth."

Groaning, Dean shook his head. "I bought them because I like my fucking Doritos and didn't want to have to pick up and leave in the middle of the stake-out to go get dinner, okay?"

"Which is exactly what you're making Bobby do," Castiel pointed out. "Although I still don't understand your obsession with bacon cheeseburgers, or why it was necessary that he go get them from Biggerson's when the McDonald's was closer."

"Yeah, well, that's because you've never had one, okay? And you can't compare a Biggerson's Blue Ribbon Big Mouth Bacon Burger Special to some mystery meat from Mickey D's, okay? ...It's like pie, you can't compare two different kinds of—"

"I don't understand your obsession with pie, either."

("And I don't understand why you two can't hunt demons quietly like normal people, but who knows, maybe I'm a traditionalist like that." If they didn't stop it soon, Sam was going to have to smack them both. He could feel the urge to do so bubbling up and making it that much harder to restrain himself.)

"Now that just fucking hurts me, okay, Cas? I put a lot of time and effort into finding you the right piece of pie, from the right place, with the fucking perfect whipped cream—"

"And then you didn't let me have any because you wanted to eat it off my chest. I was there as well, Dean. I remember what happened."

"Oh yeah? So how can you even begin to tell me that you don't understand my obsession with pie. Was that or was that not one of the single best nights of your life?"

"I would place it higher than the time Uriel got me drunk and we accidentally set Yersinia pestis on Sicily, but below that time you let me handcuff you to the bed and—"

"OH MY GOD," Sam exploded. "WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP AND FUCK ALREADY?"

A flush spread over Castiel's cheeks and quickly started receding; Dean's entire face and neck erupted in red. They tried to look at each other, but this only made the situation worse. Even Castel's irritatingly rosy glow hung around. "...Sam," the angel ventured, staring intently at the snow between his legs. "As an archangel, I feel it is my duty to inform you that blasphemy isn't—"

"Okay, you know what, Cas? I don't care." Sam dropped his binoculars and, noticing Dean's attempt to take advantage of the situation, snatched up the bag of Doritos and threw them into the forest. The crestfallen expression that Dean gave him didn't stop Sam from pointing strenuously at him and snapping, "And you... I get it. I went to Hell, hewent to Heaven, and you were miserable at Lisa's. But you weren't the only one having an awful time of things, okay? And I think I've been pretty good about putting up with your fourteen-year-old girl, 'he broke up with me, my life is over' bullshit — and..." He turned his pointing finger to Castiel, "that goes without mentioning your petulant, 'Dean had sex with someone other than me and has the emotional intelligence of a broken ankle' crap!"

"I never said anything of that nature—" Castiel started, only for Sam to cut him off:

"But you've been thinking it, Cas!" Even as he lowered his voice, Sam's face turned a shade of eggplant purple, and displayed some impressive muscular gymnastics. "You've been thinking it so loudly, I could practically hear it over the Impala's speakers. Do you know how fucking frustrating it is to sit in a car with two embittered ex-lovers when one of them keeps using his magical angel powers to rewind the tape of Alanis Morissette and make us listen to 'You Oughta Know' until I'm ready to throw up?"

"Sammy..." Dean reached out his hand, awkwardly patting Sam on the shoulder. "I think it's time for you to take a deep breath and calm down."

"No, Dean, fuck that." Sam paused just long enough to sigh and brush his hair off of his face. "It's time for you two to wise up. Neither of you are being particularly subtle here. We could bring Dad back to life and he wouldn't last five minutes before telling you to go do the horizontal Time Warp—"

(Still blushing, Castiel looked to Dean and whispered, "What's a Time Warp?"

"It's a dance... thing. From this movie... Tell you what. I'll show you Rocky Horror next time we're not chest-deep in demons." If Cas hung around for that long.)

Sam continued ranting as though they'd never interrupted him: "And I mean, come on, guys! You had pretty loud make up sex last night! Isn't that supposed to, you know... fix things?"

"Well, we had sex, sure, but it didn't change any—"

"You know what? Screw you guys," Sam concluded, unceremoniously interrupting Dean, standing up and brushing off the snow. "I'm going for a walk."

He stalked off without another word, and for a long while, Dean and Castiel sat in silence. "That was odd," the angel finally said, picking up his binoculars once more. In response to Dean asking what he meant, he replied, "Sam's normally more clever when he's upset."

They sat in silence together for long enough that the stars came out. Finally, Dean had to ask: "So, uh... what's Yersinia pestis? That some kind of demon?"

Castiel shook his head. "You people call it the Black Death."

"Wait... a couple of angels were responsible for the Black Death?" Castiel nodded, fixing his binoculars on a pair of children playing hopscotch underneath a streetlamp — both of them, demons. "I mean... 'scuze me if I'm wrong, but don't you think that's more up Pestilence's sleeve?"

"Oh, no. Pestilence merely controls bacteria, viruses, and parasites. My Father is the one who created them, and we have been known to use disease in order to make a point. Look at the Plagues of Egypt—"

"Like the Charlton Heston movie?" Dean tried to smirk, but it came out as more of a grin, and for the first time since he and Cas had been alone, his chuckle was earnest instead of bitter.

Castiel rolled his eyes with an uncommon amount of affection. "Like the Book of Exodus, Dean." They fell quiet again, for just a moment, as Dean's hand strayed toward Castiel's; the angel asked no questions, but slowly let his own edge closer to Dean's. The hunter forced a cough as an excuse to snatch his away, and covered the poor faking job by demanding to know what the impressive, theological point was for that. "There wasn't one, not really — though that didn't stop the people of the time from trying to find one. Scientists still haven't stopped, they have all these excuses about natural population control and poor hygiene and they have a few valid points, but ultimately it was two drunk angels getting rowdy."

"No offense meant, but it's hard to imagine you and Uriel getting anywhere near rowdy, Cas."

Castiel shrugged. "We'd just successfully exorcised Samhain, and we got carried away. ...Anyway, Anna... I believe the phrase you would use is chewed us out? for it, in the morning."

"Oh, Anna," Dean sighed. "She was a badass — before she went all Glenn Close on us." As soon as Dean used the pronoun, both he and Castiel pricked up; their gazes locked, and a brief flash of pink rose to Dean's cheeks. "Look, Cas, I... what Sam said, about you and me and... well, and us—"

"I'm aware of what he said, Dean. I was there too."

"No, I mean... was he serious?"

Castiel set his binoculars between his legs, and just looked down at the town with his own eyes. He sighed, and allowed his hand to stray back toward Dean's hip. "Was he telling the truth about you?" Dean tried to say about ten different things at once, and in the end, what came out was a jumbled mess of denial, snark, pointing the finger at his younger brother, cursing God, Gabriel, Crowley, Bela, Lucifer, Michael, and everyone short of his father and Cas, swear words, and mixed up syllables that translated to Have you seen my ducky love pellet? in Swedish. "It is not that Sam did not speak honestly about me and my... feelings for you, Dean," Castiel clarified, "but you've seemed so uncomfortable since I returned—"

"Well, yeah, because... maybe Sam wasn't exactly lying about me—"

"And I just..." It took effort, but Castiel forced himself to meet Dean's gaze (and he got a sinking, let-down feeling in his stomach when Dean blushed and looked away). "I didn't want to cause you any more pain." After Dean went quiet for too long, Castiel asked: "...What are you thinking?"

Dean snaked an arm around the angel's shoulders. "Cas, man... I am thinking that we have got to be two of the dumbest sons of bitches on the planet."

They kissed, but to their mutual chagrin, it didn't last long. Instead, someone cleared a throat behind them, and they practically leapt apart. It wasn't Sam, or Bobby, and as Castiel looked over the facade — which, he had to admit, was certainly a pretty one, with a black-leather jacket, a heart-shaped face, and honey blonde ringlets that reached the middle of her back — he couldn't have agreed more with Dean's assessment of their intelligence. Dealings with demons superseded discussions of love. Past the outward show of her meat-suit, the angel saw her true face, with its knotted gray skin and the dark halo that emanated off her like an oil spill. Narrowing his eyes, he hissed, "Hello, Belial."

"Belial?" Dean spluttered. "I — you — she... you mean Meg?"

Smirking, Meg took a knife out of the holster on her hip; the blade was gnarled, sharp enough to sing through the air as she idly rotated her wrist, and covered in a mess of sigils that made Castiel gulp. "You know... I never really got why my daddy named me Belial," she said. "It's nothing personal, really, I'm sure he had his reasons... but I really love being Meg. It's just so punchy."

Dean resorted to the tactic he knew the best: false bravado. "The Hell do you want, you black-eyed skank?"

"Just a talk."

"If you just want to talk," Castiel asked, "then why do you have a knife that looks like it was designed to kill angels?"

"Oh, this little thing?" She pretended to examine it. "You know, I'm kind of lucky that Sammy ripped Alastair to pieces. He'd kill me for figuring this trick out when he couldn't... but don't worry, Baby Blue Eyes. I'm not gonna use it on you... not yet anyway." She paused a moment, and her expression turned serious. "So my ritual, boys? It's gotta go down in the same place you shoved my Father back into his cage—"

"Stull's Cemetery?" Dean interjected.

"Ten points for having a functional memory, Dean-o. And because I'm the fair and balanced type, I'll even tell you when it's happening: tomorrow night." The smirk tugged at her lips again. "It's not like you could stop it anyway."

Dean reached for his pistol with the rock salt bullets, but she disappeared before he had the chance to fire. Castiel didn't ignore his casual use of blasphemy — "God dammit" — but took his hand and pointed out that, "I think this occasion calls for 'son of a bitch' instead."


	11. And All Your Love Is Revenge

Lisa worried whenever Sam and Dean let her know what they were venturing off to hunt — she couldn't help it. As she set about handling her baked lasagna, and the tray of cookies that she and Barnes had whipped up earlier, her thoughts weren't so much on the food as they were on wondering when the Hell those infuriating Winchesters were going to give her peace of mind and let her know that they hadn't gone running off a cliff with their angel friend. Maybe Castiel, or whatever his name was, would survive that, and maybe Sam and Dean could just come back, but that wasn't as reassuring a notion as Damien seemed to think it was. He leaned against the nearby counter, munching on an apple while Becky handled the salad and Barnes set the table.

"I mean, all I'm trying to say Lisa is Sam and Dean are… they're Sam. and. Dean." How this passed as logic was entirely beyond Lisa's grasp, and she arched an eyebrow at the goateed man, begging him to pray, illuminate her. "It's like... in terms of hunters. You've got a lot of guys like me and Barnes — especially since the rest of Mister Edlund's books started coming out and telling us about the Apocalypse? Half the fans at the Winchesters R Us forums started mobilizing, or at least trying to put devil's traps and salt lines out there so people can be safe."

"I still think it's just outrageous that Mitchie got arrested for that," Becky piped up, slicing a particularly plump tomato. "Yeah, sure, the cops can go on forever and a day about vandalism or whatever, but she was just trying to protect her neighborhood."

"I don't think it was really the vandalism they were getting upset about?" Barnes offered. He set the places backwards and had since Sam and Dean left him here. Ben always chided him for it, when he wasn't off at a friend's house like he was tonight, pointing out that the correct order of cutlery was not fork, spoon, plate, knife, but of all the eccentricities that had been flung Lisa's way in the past few days, this one was the most tolerable. "I mean, Mitch kind of spray painted one of her town's pretty famous historical sites—"

"In order to keep demons at bay, yeah—"

"I'm just saying, Becky? Like... not everybody's read the books, and not everybody believes Sam and Dean are real... I mean, Dames and I didn't? And we're actually fans of Mister Edlund's books, and it's just... I kind of understand where they were coming from, is all I mean—" Barnes paused, turning whiter than the linoleum beneath his feet and swallowing in some vain attempt to get his heart out of his throat. "N-n-not that, you know, your point of view is less valid or anything, but... most people aren't going to just believe that we were trying to help apparently fictional characters stop the apparently fictional Apocalypse?"

Becky shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, you wrote a Sam/Cas fic. And it was smuttier than any of your Wincest. I mean, come on — I know you haven't seen 'Lucifer Rising' or 'Free to Be You And Me' or even 'On the Head Of A Pin' yet, but come on. It's so obvious that Castiel's true love is Dean, okay?" Maybe other people would've seen some kind of problem with Becky when she got all huffy and indignant like this, but it brought a smile to Lisa's face, at least. "Besides, Sam is kind of straight for everyone who isn't Dean. He and Ruby have had chemistry since she saved him from the Seven Deadlies."

"Did we read the same scene in 'It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester' or didn't we?" Barnes spluttered, and dropped his handful of spoons. They clattered to the floor and he looked so tempted to start flapping his arms and hoping that he'd fly. "I mean... I believe in Wincest too, but Sam was just like, totally hero-worshipping Castiel there, okay? And I know, I know: hero-worshipping doesn't equal having sex or anything, but—"

"What he means to say is," Damien interrupted, through a mouthful of a half-chewed apple. He swallowed. Took another bite, and then concluded: "He lost a Super Bowl bet with one of the guy who used to play Ash in our LARP. They didn't want to put money on the line, and then 'Lazarus Rising' came out, and Tommy was all like, 'Screw you guys, I want to play Cas now, and if Barnes loses, I get to, and he has to write whatever kind of fanfic I tell him to'."

"But you know, it doesn't mean that I don't still ship Sam and Dean." He gave Damien an affectionate, knowing smile. "I just... there was that one time, and I can see where the people who ship it are coming from... but if I want to see Cas with anybody, then I want it to be with Dean. ...Especially since, you know. Actually meeting him. ...Oh my God, you know?"

"Do you think anybody's writing about Dean and Alastair?" Damien mused.

"Oh yeah, totally," Becky agreed sagely. "There's one really great one I read, and it gets Wincesty toward the end, because... it's sort of not-canon once you get to 'On the Head Of A Pin,' especially with how Castiel is suddenly able to kill Alastair, when he totally wasn't in 'Heaven and Hell' and then he had a Winchester threesome, which is just... totally hot, but never going to happen."

Damien nodded, taking another huge bite of apple. "Yeah, because Castiel clearly only had eyes for Dean."

Lisa furrowed her brow and let her smile turn into a frown. Oh, sure, she understood that Dean — the real Dean, not just his representation in Becky's ex's books — had had some kind of relationship with the blue-eyed angel who'd all of a sudden shown up on her doorstep, but the fact of this conversation was that she had to be missing something. And she'd gotten used to these kind of talks coming out of nowhere since the two LARPing fanboys had temporarily moved in. Seeing as they and Becky started going on like this at least once an hour, or so and the talks very rarely got easier to understand, life sort of required growing accustomed to them... but it made Lisa's heart twist around in her chest regardless, listening to the three of them carry on as though Sam and Dean were still just characters in books. They weren't perfect, definitely. And they certainly weren't going to sleep together — Becky had proposed them having a threesome with someone in the middle once, only for Dean to tell her that ugh, they were brothers — but, well... maybe Lisa just didn't understand the appeal of writing stories about people you knew were real.

Granted, she also didn't understand the popping noise that rocketed through the kitchen, or the leggy redhead in the French maid's outfit who shoved Barnes away from the table and started setting it with a spread worthy of Thanksgiving with the extended family (of which Sam and Dean were members), or the sudden advent of the short man with the knifelike smirk and the eyes that glowed like the burning end of a cigarette. But Lisa could only assume that somehow, someway, the Winchesters were going to be involved in this. No one spoke for a few moments, with everyone too shocked to say anything at all... but finally, Becky's face broke out into a broad grin and she shrieked:

"Gabriel!"

"Whoa, whoa, wait just a minute here..." Setting his core on the counter, Damien stood up straight, took two steps toward the little man, and pointed at him. "That is theTrickster! I mean... I like, kind of painstakingly reread 'Mystery Spot' a ton of times, just to make sure that I got all of Dean's lines right, so... I think I remember how Mister Edlund described the guy responsible for that book's plot? And that... I don't know, man, it's like the book just came to life."

Gabriel huffed. "That's because it was written about life, big guy."

"And I kind of think that I know better than you, Dee," Becky pointed out as though she'd just time-traveled to a southern California mall in 1985 and fallen in with a tribe of wild valley girls. Damien rolled his eyes and asked if Becky was just saying that because she was the web-mistress of , which made her sneer, "No! ...I'm just saying it because he's the one who told me I was having Samantha Dee, and I don't know about you, but I think that's something you kind of remember pretty well."

"...I think I'd remember it if Damien turned up pregnant too," Barnes said, looking so hopelessly lost.

"Oh my God, you guys, what did I tell you about the house rules on mpreg?"

Barnes and Damien traded glances, and said in unison: "Don't talk about it?"

This all too easily could have devolved into another round of people trying to out-snark each other, and for all she didn't mind playing the peacemaker most of the time, Lisa was not having that: she thumped both of her hands on either side of her lasagna dish, and snapped, "Okay, that's all fine and whatever, but... you." She pointed to the little man — Gabriel, or the Trickster, or whoever he was — and sighed. "...Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

"Finally," Gabriel chuckled. "Someone with more than two drops of common sense."

Lisa wrapped her hand around the hilt of her carving knife without thinking of it. The blade was stainless steel, not silver like Sam and Dean wanted her to have... but Barnes had the demon-killing knife. They'd be safe... probably. "That," she replied, "does not answer my question."

An aggrieved sigh came out of Gabriel's lips and he held his hands up in apparent surrender. "Fine, fine — yes, my name is Gabriel. I used to run around playing the Trickster, but the Apocalypse shook my delicate, archangelic ass back up to Paradise and I've been putting up with shit from Castiel ever since, not to mention Zachariah and his hissy fits."

"...Who's Zachariah?" Damien asked. Lisa didn't hesitate in telling him to shut up and let Gabriel talk.

His story took a while to go over, since he seemed more than content to throw in every extraneous detail that came to his mind about how Sam's ass looked in this pair of jeans, or how Sam was being such a good sport about one thing or the other, or something about Sam that was only tangentially related to the part where, apparently, Gabriel had been trying to get Dean and Castiel back together in the middle of demons trying to kill Becky's baby and raise Lucifer, thereby ending the world again. Becky, Barnes, and Damien all loosened up somewhat, as though hearing this explanation of purposes made everything about the archangel's presence make an unfathomable amount of sense, but Lisa's hand never came off the knife. She just tightened her hold on it, glaring at him.

"...So now I'm here," Gabriel concluded, "because those two are being idiots, and I'm out of patience, and you all are going to come and help me get them back together."

Becky squealed in delight, but, wrinkling her nose at the angel, Lisa interrupted: "Are you serious?"

Saying that Gabriel looked stunned would have done a serious disservice to exactly how shocked he seemed. "...Well, yeah, I mean... don't you want Dean and Cas to stop being such difficult pains in the ass?"

"I only met Castiel a few days ago," Lisa pointed out. "And, honestly? What I want has nothing to do with Dean's sex life. We broke up — whoever he wants to sleep with isnone of my business. And it's none of yours either, especially not now — have you noticed that there are bigger things to worry about here? Like, demons trying to kill God's unborn daughter, for example? Or even just that Dean and Castiel are kind of busy right now?"

"Uh, Lisa?" Barnes chimed in, once more sounding as though someone had dropped him into a maze without a map, compass, cell phone, or other means of finding his way out. "Your knuckles are getting really white, and... Maybe you want to relax a little?"

"What I want is for this archangel to explain why he thinks that whether or not Dean and Cas are having sex is more important than my girlfriend's Jesus baby!"

Gabriel had talked his way out of a lot of sticky situations before — he'd hated having to explain to his Father why Abraham had suddenly decided that sending Hagar and Ishmael away, most likely to their deaths, was a good idea, and he'd only barely made it out of clarifying why King Saul had gone mad with his wings intact — but the sheerrage and frustration emanating off of Lisa Braeden made him briefly fear that, maybe, she would find some way to kill him with her kitchen knife. The air crackled, and, unfortunately for all involved, the tension between Lisa and Gabriel provided the perfect window of opportunity for two particularly adventurous demons. The next thing that Gabriel, Lisa, and Becky knew, their knees gave out underneath them. Becky's cellphone slid out of her pocket, but remained unnoticed.

Barnes and Damien were the only ones to see the demons reveal themselves, and both attempted to distance themselves... as much as they could, when they backed into the walls at the opposite ends of the room, anyway. The taller demon smirked, picking Gabriel up by the collar of his jacket. His companion gathered up Becky and Lisa with a similar lack of concern.

"Oh, don't worry, you two," he snarked. "Belial only wants the useful members of your little household."

The demons disappeared as quickly as they'd shown up, but Barnes and Damien stayed silent for a good five minutes, both reeling from the shock of what they'd witnessed. "...We need Sam and Dean," Damien finally announced.

Barnes retrieved Becky's phone from underneath the table. "We need to call Mrs. Burroughs and let her know Ben needs to sleep over for a few days."

"What the Hell are we supposed to tell her, genius? 'Can you please keep Ben for a little while longer, his mom and Becky got kidnapped and now we have to go and save the world from demons'?"

Barnes shrugged. "...We could say something's up with the baby? And then we'll bring over some extra clothes and tell Ben the truth and get on the road... well. Maybe not tell Ben the truth, I mean... he is Dean's kid, and we can't let him come with us, you know? It's like, we'd save the day and then Lisa would kill us anyway."

Damien nodded. He had to admit: for all his boy couldn't remember to keep character half the time, he really was the smart one.


	12. I Never Meant To Be So Bad To You

When Lisa came to, the first thing that she noticed was that someone had bound her wrists. After that, she noticed that Becky was sitting to her left (she could tell from the wordless whining noises), and that Gabriel was to her right. Then, she gleaned that the three of them and some fourth person had been bound around a pole, in the middle of some cemetery that looked like it had lately been the victim of a nuclear bomb... and finally, Lisa took note of the ring of fire that surrounded them. She sighed and looked down at Gabriel; the distraught frown seemed so out of place on him, it might as well have been transplanted there from someone else.

"So I'm guessing that, whatever this is, you can't use your angel powers to do anything about it?" she asked, her voice dry and even.

"Bingo," he replied. "Holy oil is such a bitch move — seriously. And it's not that I can't believe it, but—"

"Oh, do go on, precious," drawled the fourth member of their group. He sounded British, and whoever he was, he wanted Gabriel to shut up as much as Lisa did, and that fact endeared him to her immediately. "I know your pride must be smarting something awful, but we have more pressing issues to deal with, at the moment."

"Just... can you ever keep your opinion to yourself, Crowley?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can — but I scarcely see the point when you insist on making this rubbish harder for the rest of us than it already is."

Lisa smirked when Gabriel turned his gaze to the ground between his legs. Maybe watching him sulk like a dejected four-year-old wasn't helping anybody, but Lisa didn't mind, not really. Getting called out on his self-serving shenanigans had probably been a long time coming for the archangel. After a moment of silence, she piped up again, "So, Crowley."

She couldn't see it, but his smile was pleasant in a way uncommon for demons. "Ms Lisa Braeden?"

"You're a demon, right? I mean... Becky's told me some about you, and I know you helped out Sam and Dean, and that demons used to be humans once, but I haven't read the books, so..."

"Ah, yes, Becky..." Crowley paused, and turned his head so he could give Becky a peck on the cheek; she giggled, and flushed bright pink. Ostensibly trying to hide from the chance that Crowley might decide to judge her, she put her head on Lisa's shoulder. "Couldn't have gotten the Winchesters' attentions without your stunning attention to detail. You're a peach, love. You truly are."

"So, do you get your name from Aleister Crowley, then?" Lisa asked, leaning her cheek onto the top of Becky's head.

"Oh, no, not as such. On the other hand, little Aleister was my..." He wrinkled his nose, apparently doing some fairly thorough mental mathematics. "Some-odd number of greats-grandson. Most of the extended family's off in County Cork, Ireland, but our branch of it wound up in England, starting with a delightful, lengthy tryst I'd had with a nun. And I cropped up, well... I was about ten when Joseph's brothers sold him , Lilith got her claws in me when I was twenty-one. There's about a hundred-twenty years in Hell, and I first got out top-side when William of Normandy showed up in Hastings... she took Alastair out of tempting people and inciting clan warfare in Scotland, made him her torture-master shortly thereafter... So. I'd been around the block a few times when my grandson decided that he was an occultist."

Lisa hummed pensively. "So the accent...?"

Crowley shrugged. "I was in Britain for a good three, four hundred years, and I like it there. These things tend to hang around."

"Right. ...And I don't suppose there's anything you can do to get us out of here, is there?"

"Alas, my dear, there isn't. Belial might be a careless little trollop with her Hell-hounds, but she has a regrettable amount of foresight when it comes to painting devil's traps."

Lisa sighed. "Of course." It just figured that they'd be taken hostage by some demon who actually had a functioning brain.

The group went silent, and they might have stayed that way... but after twenty minutes, Becky got bored. "Gaaaabriel?" she said. Once he acknowledged her, she asked: "Truth or dare?"

He snapped, "...You know it's kind of impossible for me to do a dare right now, I hope?"

"Oh yes," Becky agreed. "But I still wanted to offer you the choice."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Truth."

"So, how much do you want to have sex with Sam?"

Gabriel groaned, and utterly failed to hide the scarlet blush that rose to his cheeks. If he got out of here alive, he was going to get out all of this frustration by giving Sam Winchester the best blow-job he'd ever had in his life.

Dean sighed and slumped against the Impala's hood — and underestimated the distance between the windshield and his shoulders just enough that, when the back of his head thumped on it, he found it worthy of a grunt and a grimace. Since Barnes and Damien had called with the news of what had happened to Gabriel, Lisa, and Becky, Dean had looked for just about anything he could smack his head on, and this was the first time that Castiel hadn't bothered stopping him. Back in the trunk, Sam and Bobby went over the various weapons they had, trying to prep everything for leading a charge. The only thing that they lacked, as Sam was more than comfortable pointing out until Dean was ready to slug the son of a bitch, was a plan.

"Well," Dean sighed, crossing his arms over his chest, "I say we wait for Dumb and Dumber to show up and then go right in and save the day from evil bitches. How's that for a freaking plan?"

"It won't be that easy," Castiel pointed out. For want of anything better to do, he paced around the car. Jeans, he thought, were considerably more comfortable than his suit had been, even though he didn't quite fit this pair as well as he would've fit some of his own. For all Dean was closer to his size than Sam and Bobby were, Castiel had still needed to tightly fasten a belt and cuff the bottoms of his borrowed pants. The only thing that dragged the angel back out of pondering how he'd need to get a pair or two of these for himself was Dean demanding to know why it wouldn't be that easy. Bobby started to say something, but Castiel interrupted him: "I'd think this would be obvious to you, Dean. You've fought with Belial before."

"Yeah, and every time, you know what happened? We got out fine — well. Except for the one time where she kidnapped Dad and then Meg the girl wound up dead, but that was mostly not fine because we got hit by a fucking truck."

"I am aware of what happened leading up to your father making his Deal, Dean." Castiel tried to keep himself from rolling his eyes, but... this situation frustrated him too much for restraint. "The Heavenly Host had tabs kept on you and Sam long before your births — and, besides... you were in trouble."

"What do you mean I was in trouble? I was having an out-of-body experience, Cas, there's kind of a difference between—"

"No, no, I mean..." Castiel paused in front of Dean and didn't realize that he was mimicking the position of his charge's arms until it occurred to him that he'd been silent for too long while trying to properly articulate himself. As he spoke, he closed the distance between himself and Dean, and one of his hands dropped onto Dean's arm. "It's history, and not especially relevant to our mission against Belial, but... I was watching over you that night. To see if you made the right choice — which you did. If you hadn't kept Tessa at bay for so long, you would have—"

"Are you two idjits done having When Harry Met Sally time over there," Bobby called, "or do I have to come and smack the two of you upside the head?" Without waiting for a response, he cocked a shotgun and fired a test round into the night.

"They're never going to be done, Bobby," Sam sighed. "I couldn't even cut through their sexual tension with Ruby's knife."

In unison, Dean and Castiel snapped, "Shut up, Sam!"

All parties involved wished for this to be the end of the discussion, with everyone attempting to handle separate things without devolving into snarking at each other over the littlest things... but instead of things going according to plan, a series of popping noises took everyone by surprise. Castiel startled, whipping around to see who had come to join them; had he not slipped on a patch of ice and collapsed into Dean's chest, the effect would have been sufficiently dramatic. However, as it went, he found himself face-to-face with Barachiel and four of their brothers who served in Israfel's garrison, with Dean's arms around his waist.

"Aww, Cas, you shouldn't be scared of little old Cupid," Dean taunted, resting his chin on Castiel's shoulder. The angel flushed bright red. "I mean, I know he's naked and everything, but he doesn't bite." Snickering, Dean gave Castiel a squeeze. "But don't worry. I'll protect you."

"Don't be ridiculous. He doesn't terrify me." Not that Castiel particularly objected to being held like this. He outright didn't mind it, even, and with a sigh, he just leaned back and let Dean have his fun, pretending to be the big, tough man. "What are you doing here, Barachiel?"

"And what's up with the shitty Nirvana cover band you brought?" Dean snickered, because this was, he thought, supremely witty.

Cupid scrunched up his face, looking like Dean and Castiel had just mortally offended him, and then killed his favorite puppy. "...I brought the cavalry! Well, the Heavenly Chorus, anyway, but they serve the same function as a cavalry... if by cavalry, you mean that you don't mind them providing suitable background music for any situation you might find yourselves in. ...You're fighting Belial tomorrow, right? I just... I wanted to help. It wouldn't be a proper battle for the sake of—"

"Just... go home, Barachiel," Castiel ordered with a sigh. Cupid shook his head and invoked his Castiel-given right to question directives that he didn't agree with; Castiel rolled his eyes. "There's no reason for you to be here. We have two more hunters coming with us—"

"They are sorta incompetent sons of bitches, though," Bobby pointed out. "I mean, let's at least be honest here: whatever they do to help us 's gonna be more in the way of providin' a distraction than actually bein' useful."

"Hey, man, they saved an entire convention full of people when me and Sam got stuck inside."

"They're guided by the inspired word," Castiel said. "They don't have all of it available to them yet, but Rebecca has done an admirable job of instructing them in the later gospels — as much as she could in a few days' time, anyway. That alone makes them soldiers of Heaven, and that should make them useful enough."

Cupid pouted, and appeared on the verge of tears. His eyes darted from Sam to Dean to Castiel to Bobby, and then in various orders thereof, and finally, he exploded: "But I just wanted to help, and then Gabriel got taken, and we were supposed to be working together to make you..." He gesticulated wildly in Dean and Castiel's direction, but didn't specifically point to one or the other of them, "to see the light and stop being so difficult — and speaking of, I'm so happy you two are back together, you just make such a sweet couple, and I told Gabriel that the kiss you had in the motel was True Love's own, but he didn't want to listen, which was totally fair because I realized just a little while ago? ...You guys needed a chorus like the one I have here to make the moment right, but anyway, Gabriel... he just thought he'd go get Lisa and Becky to stage a... romantic intervention for you, but well... you know how Gabriel gets when he sets his mind to something, and—"

"Wait... what was that last part?" Dean interrupted.

"What, you mean about the... about you and Castiel having True Love's Kiss, or—"

Dean's grip on Castiel's waist started got tight enough that the angel made a noise of discomfort; however, Dean ignored it and snapped: "The part about Gabriel, genius!"

Shrugging, Cupid said: "Oh, well, that wasn't anything really, just that we've been trying to get you and Castiel back together again — it was so sweet of you to try with Lisa, you know, but... well, there's true love on the one hand, and then you've got Gabriel just being blatantly self-interested and not listening to my ideas, but—" This time what cut off Cupid's ramblings was not Dean's voice, but Castiel being shoved into him. They stumbled backwards and fell into a snowbank, and even so, Cupid smiled up at his big brother. "Don't worry, Cas. I've got you."

Castiel attempted to struggle away, but instead, wound up with the hug that, he supposed, had been his belated 'hello.' He didn't even manage to turn around and look Dean in the eye when he barked: "You junk-less. son of a bitch—"

"We've been over this, Dean—"

"Oh! Excuse me, we've been over this — I must've missed the part where you've apparently been stringing me along, for God only knows what reason—"

"My Father isn't involved in this!" Castiel's shock cut through the air like a slap to the face. Apparently, Cupid sensed and took issue with this emotion, and decided that it needed a tighter squeeze around the chest. "I swear — I have no idea what he's talking about—"

"Yeah, well, bite me."

Castiel heard Dean stalk off, with the clarification that he was just taking a walk, dammit. He heard Bobby sigh and go off after Dean — and finally, he heard Sam pipe up, "...You know, Barachiel? We might be able to put you and your chorus here to use after all."


	13. You Get Me Closer To God

The battle didn't happen quickly and it didn't turn out to be one for the ages, but to the hypothetical relief of everyone involved, it at least had the decency to get over with in time for anyone who cared to get home and catch the football game.

The problem with this reality was that no one particularly cared about the football game. Dean and Sam cared only for saving the world once again, Castiel cared for making sure that his Father's creation stayed protected, and anyone else involved had their own motivations. Crowley rather wanted to get out alive so he could take Bobby to Bali for ten days of perfect, 'so help me, Robert Steven Singer, we are not going to talk, think, or any other verb of your choice about hunting or I will let Bruiser have his way with your glorious member' relaxation, just like he'd lovingly threatened to do the first time they'd fucked on Bobby's sofa. Gabriel just wanted to avoid seeing the angelic Limbo ever again. So it goes.

Things opened up as all good hostage scenes do, with the captor continuing to lord it over her prey that she thought she had everything in the bag. Belial had always had a particular talent for doing so; it was one of the things her father had praised her for until his dying day. She strolled aimlessly around the four would-be sacrifices, tossing her knife up and down because she could, and saying things like, "Well, you know, it's just a shame that the Virgin Bitch has to be so pretty. Trust me, sweetheart? If you weren't pregnant with the Christ child, I would show you a whole fucking world full of things you've never even dreamed of."

"...I'm not really a virgin anymore, you know that, right?" Becky asked. "I mean, yeah, Chuck and I never slept together, but I think Lisa's a lot better than he would've been anyway. She doesn't need semi-constant reassurance that I love her and not Sam Winchester. ...And you know, it's really not fair to anybody to say that lesbian sex isn't real sex, because that makes it seem like we need a man for it to count and that just perpetuates the partiarc—"

Meg cut Becky off with a smack on the face, for which Lisa kicked her on the back of the calf. As soon as the demon turned around, Lisa added: "Besides, Becky's dreamt of a lot of interesting things. She wrote this one fic of you-inside-of-Sam, Dean, and Jo... totally priceless." She grinned, even though she was facing down a nephil, born of the chief of the fallen angels, and Lisa didn't let any of Meg's untoward curses affect her expression. It wasn't that, on the inside, she wasn't quaking with fear and doubt — she was. But Lisa Braeden didn't just let herself quiver in uselessness when there were people to save, lives to look after, and other important things to do.

Meg glowered. She was good at glowering. Taught lessons in it to the junior demons, even. She tossed a barb at Gabriel, who didn't dignify her half-assed attempt at wit with a retort, so she snapped at Crowley, who was still a mite sore over how she'd gotten her pet Hell-hounds killed back in Carthage, Missouri. And so on. And so on.

Finally, the moon came up and the stars came out, and Meg smiled because the time was nearly perfect for the ritual. It might have gone off without a hitch, too... except for the popping noise and jubilant, "Hi, sweetheart!" that made her turn away from her carefully prepared makeshift altar. When she saw Cupid standing there, in all his pale, smiling, nude, chubby glory, she furrowed her brow.

"...Who let you off the sprout farm, Barachiel?" she huffed.

"Oh, nobody," he replied with a shrug. "I just thought, you know... I really don't appreciate what you're trying to do here, because these are some nice people — well. Becky and Lisa are nice people, and Crowley's a nice demon, and Gabriel doesn't want people to think he's nice, but really, he has his moments, and it's sort of like—"

"Oh my God," Meg said, rolling her eyes. "Can you not sense my complete lack of interest in your treacly inanities? You can't stop me, lover boy. Go hug a cactus."

Barachiel had actually tried to hug a cactus, once. They'd only just been created, and he'd been trying to prove his point that no matter how prickly something was, if you gave it the proper amount of hugs and love, it would always love you back. Israfel had pulled spines out of his flesh for six hours. But, as it went, Barachiel only tilted his head and frowned at Meg.

"Well... you did get that right," he acquiesced, shrugging. "I can't stop you. I'm a lover, not a fighter, and I know that, Meg. I always have. And if that's wrong, then I never, ever want to be right... but, see, I... I have some friends with me. And they know how to stop you."

That was the cue that Sam had come up with, and right on time, the chorus-angels swooped in from out of nowhere. Meg staggered backwards, staring at them, and her utter loss for words wasn't at all helped when they burst out into a spirited rendition of "Rock You Like A Hurricane." (This is a somewhat liberal description of their singing, "spirited." The readiest criticism of their song was that they had the most gorgeous voices in all creation, short of Israfel's own, but that they seemed entirely unfamiliar with The Scorpions, the period of rock and roll that they'd come out of, and, indeed, rock and roll at all. Which made sense. They'd learned the song from hearing it through the Imapala's speakers.)

As soon as she recovered the use of her voice, Meg called up the cadre of demons that she'd brought with her. They attempted to charge the angels, only to meet the business end of Ruby's knife (wielded by Damien) and demon-banishing powers (wielded by Sam). He knew that Dean didn't want him using them, but as soon as Sam pulled his first demon into his chest and laid his hand on her forehead, he knew that this type of power was different than the control he'd gotten from chugging Ruby's blood. Pure, white-hot energy shot through his arm and met the darkness inside the demon's meat-suit; his whole side trembled; the demon's eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open; and in an explosion of bright light, Sam destroyed the evil. Damien stared, until another demon thwacked him on the head and reminded him that there was still a battle he needed to fight.

Dean, Barnes, and Bobby had to fight their way through demons too, once the sons of bitches noticed that they were heading for the altar. But a few handy rounds of rock salt-and-holy water bullets incapacitated most of the things, and the last one just smoked out when it became obvious that there was no way he could match the hunters — even the tall, skinny one knew his stuff better than the demon liked admitting, but turning coward was better than dying. Meg might have tried to fight back, and she might have been able to put up some kind of effort in her own defense — but the problem with that idea was that Bela had better skills with a knife. They tussled, they knocked each other to the ground and fought tooth-and-nail despite the excessive mud, and for all Meg put into salvaging her attempt to bring back her Father, Bela still got the magical knife from her. She smirked and, embedding the blade in Meg's meat-suit's heart, whispered, "I would've preferred doing this to Lilith, but she was more fun to deal with than you."

And Castiel's role in everything was rescuing the hostages: while the demons were sufficiently distracted, he showed up by their collective side. He called a nearby rainstorm in to put out the burning holy oil. This had the pleasant side effect of making the devil's trap's paint run. And once these things had been handled, he cut the rope bonds that had kept them hostage. The last thing that Belial-at-one-point-known-as-Meg-Masters saw before her spirit ceased to be was Gabriel charging Sam and flinging his arms around the younger Winchester's shoulders, all but screaming, "My hero!" For being so tiny, the archangel was powerful, and both of them wound up knocked flat on Sam's back, in the mud beside a tombstone. Without any semblance of respect for the dead, Gabriel threw a forceful kiss in Sam's direction, claiming the boy's mouth with his own.

He only stopped when Sam hit him on the ass in a way that decidedly did not say thank you, sir, now give me another before we fuck. "Not here," Sam explained, giving Gabriel a Skeptical Look as though demanding to know if he'd suffered any recent head trauma. Gabriel shrugged; Sam pointed at the hunk of marble at the head of the grave. It read Mary Campbell Winchester, 1954 — 1983.

"Oh," Gabriel said.

"...Yeah."

Gabriel snapped his fingers, transporting them to the other end of the graveyard, and resumed kissing Sam as though nothing had happened. When they separated to come up for air, Sam ran his fingers down the archangel's neck and chuckled, "Took you long enough." And, normally, Gabriel might have needed to fall into a fight of 'who can snark better than whom,' but just this once, he thought, he could forgive Sam for getting cheeky with him. Neither of them particularly cared that Bela perched on a nearby headstone, filing her nails again and watching them the way that Dean watched burgers cooking.

The other couples had similar experiences. As soon as they both were safe, Barnes and Damien tried running at each other like some starry eyed couple in the movies... however, both had used their full allowance of coordination for the day, and they tripped with a good fifteen yards still between them. The ground's instability in mind, they shoved themselves to standing and settled for a slower, but no less passionate, embrace. Bobby helped Crowley to his feet, and as a reward for this action, promptly found himself being cuddled by the King of the Crossroads. While they were both still standing. And in full view of anyone else who'd cared to look. With a sigh, he patted Crowley between the shoulders and muttered, "Good to see you too, dumb-ass."

Lisa cuddled Becky from behind, being careful of her tender pregnancy boobs; she lowered her hand to Becky's stomach, and splayed the palm there just in time to feel the baby kick. Becky hummed, and smiled, leaning her head back onto Lisa's shoulder. Turning her head just so, she managed to press a kiss on Lisa's neck. "I'm kind of reconsidering the name Samantha Dee," she chirped.

"Oh, really?" Lisa arched an eyebrow playfully. "What are you thinking of now?"

"What about Ellen?" Becky offered. "Or Joanna Beth?"

Lisa sighed and tucked a piece of hair behind Becky's ear. Well... they might've been another set of names from the Supernatural books, but at least they didn't involve havingWinchester as a middle name. Lisa smiled, and hoped that they didn't, anyway.

Dean and Castiel watched all of this happen, and they had widely differing thoughts on the scenes that played out before them. For his part, Dean just wished that everyone would chill the fuck out and stop acting like they'd never been in a life-or-death, we-have-to-save-the-world-again-this-time situation before... but the feelings that welled up in Castiel's chest were far less simple, and more difficult for the angel to understand. Instead of trying, he stormed away, heading for the thicket of trees that laid just behind the cemetery. He heard Dean following him, but for a long while, he tried to ignore his charge.

Even though Castiel put his best efforts into paying Dean no mind, his ears refused to stop ringing with the sound of Dean's footfalls behind him, of Dean crushing snow and twigs and not letting up in his pursuit at all. "What do you want?" the angel snapped. Dean griped with some complaint or other about the fact that Cas had just up and run off. "I have served my purpose here and decided to take a walk. It was my belief that I could do so without fear of judgment or stalking."

"I wanted..." Dean stopped underneath a tree and, almost like a reward for the bemused expression on his face, got a branch's worth of snow dumped atop his head. "You just... Is it suddenly a crime for me to want to make sure you're okay?"

"I can make it back to Heaven fine, but it was considerate of you to offer to walk me to the door. Even if there is no door and, were there one, you couldn't see it until you died again." Castiel's shoulders hunched like those of a wolf on the prowl; he didn't enjoy the lupine sensation that this position brought, it felt so base and degenerate, but controlling his emotions had, so far this week, only served to make him miserable. He didn't turn to look at Dean, or else he might have noticed that the hunter's face had paled, that his jaw had fallen slack, and that, despite his best efforts, shock had made Dean's eyes start watering. "You should go," Castiel said, voice low and dangerous. "Sam might not be able to defend himself from Gabriel's libido for much longer."

"Yeah, well... I don't really give a fuck. It's been too long since Sammy got laid, and—"

"For wanting to make sure that I am okay, you seem all too willing to disregard my thoughts — the ones that I have expressed to you countless times before — about the wordfuck and your nonliteral over-use of it in conversation."

"Sue me, Cas! It's a part of my freaking vocabulary!" Sighing, Dean ran his hands back through his hair, then let them drop to his sides. "...Fine. Go back home. Go back up there and never answer your phone or send a fucking text or acknowledge me ever again. See what I care. The mutant ninja angel's probably trying to steal your spot on the ass-clown throne, right?"

Most of these remarks made Castiel's lip twitch — Dean being emotionally dishonest with him wasn't new, but that didn't mean he disliked it any less — but one thing, above all the others, stuck out at him. "...My phone has not rung since I returned to Heaven in the first place." Dean balked at this, and started listing all the different times he'd called, and the messages he'd left and the fact that hearing Castiel's voicemail message had, on some days, been the only reason why Dean had made it through the shit his life threw at him.

"Between putting up with... demons, and vampires, and Sam, and trying to be a dad, and failing worse than my old man did, and Lisa, and Becky, and Lisa hooking up with Becky, and Sam, and more Sam, and worrying about Sam, and Bela and Crowley stalking Sam... I mean, listening to that always ripped my fucking heart out Cas, but at least it was yours."

Castiel said nothing, and instead pulled out his phone. The damned thing had apparently turned itself off, or run out of batteries, at some point and with a sigh, Castiel ran his thumb down it. A shock went from his skin into the device and revived it, and while Dean seethed behind him, Castiel opened his voicemail box and started playing back the old messages: Cas? ...Cas, it's Dean. I'm trying to make things work with Lisa, and, well... I don't really think you could help with that, you're sort of clueless about this shit, but... it'd really be nice to see you. You know... when you're not too busy making your brothers act their ages.

The volume of Castiel's phone was turned up enough that, even without it being on speaker-phone, Dean could hear the playback as it went. Each successive message made him blush a little bit more and, eventually, he just turned his eyes away from Castiel's back. The snow was much less judgmental, and probably less dangerous, at that. Dean had had his daily fill and then some of pointlessly dangerous things.

Hey, Cas, it's me again and I just... Lisa and me broke up. Sam coming back sort of made the whole relationship thing... well, it doesn't matter. Me and Sam are back on the road now, and he said not to go looking for whatever dragged him out of the Hot Box but he won't tell me why, but... If it gets boring Upstairs and you need a little action, you can always come down here and hack the heads off some blood-sucking freaks with us. Wouldn't mind the company. Sam's been whining like a bitch anyway.

I want you to say your name because I fucking miss you, okay? Come pay me a visit, or just... call me back, I don't know. Why'd you have to run off on me in the first place, I know I'm not Mister Commitment, Cas, but fuck that fucking noise, I tried my damndest to be good to you, okay, and if you had an issue, we could've fucking worked it out. Instead of just... This one ended not with the same beep that accompanied hanging up, but Sam's voice unintelligibly demanding something, the sounds of a Winchester wrestling match, and Sam muttering an apology before ending the call.

"...I was kind of drunk when I sent that one," Dean explained sheepishly.

"I could tell," Castiel pointed out. His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed as the next string of messages started:

Cas, it's Dean. I know you can't be that busy with fucking politics. Call me.

Cas, it's Dean. It's late, and I'm bored, and me and Sam are at the... Gemini Motel in Greenfield, Iowa, room seventeen, and... I know this is totally unclassy and you'll probably kill me for it, but if you get this message, can you please, please, please swing by for a booty call? I haven't gotten laid since Lisa and my hand's just not cutting it, okay?

Call me back, you junk-less son of a bitch. It's not fair, you know that? Making me feel like this and then fucking off to the Cloud City. I'm going out of my mind, Cas, now stop being a bastard and let me know that Raphael hasn't fucking killed you or something.

Cas… please.

The rest of them passed in similar fashion, with Dean growing all the tenser as Castiel heard everything it had entered into Dean's head to say — how Cas should've been able to get cell service in Heaven, since he was some big-shot angel now; how Dean deserved to hear from Cas, even just to say that he was alive; how, fuck it, it wasn't fair to just run off like that. Finally, they came to the last message: What the Hell. Seriously, Cas? Thanks for sticking me with your freaking voicemail — again. Don't know how it's not full yet. I keep calling you — don't know why, since it keeps getting me jack-crap nothing. But, just… What the fuck, Cas. You were supposed to be here. I thought— The phone stopped replaying, and gave Castiel a dial-tone instead.

"That one got cut off," the angel huffed. He shuddered and whatever the feeling was that had wandered into his chest, he didn't enjoy it. It wormed around like it was trying to find his emotional center and devour it, and worse than that, Castiel couldn't even begin to parse out where one sensation ended and another began. More than worms — it was like having a hurricane inside of him.

"Your box was full," Dean explained. "...I was kind of ready to go on some more, but—"

"You have more nerve than anyone else in Creation, Dean. Did you know that?" Castiel's words crackled in the air as though they were made of pure electricity.

Dean put up a false grin, regardless. "I like to think it keeps my nipples perky—"

Castiel turned around; his glare was white hot. Dean wanted to find it funny, getting that look from a guy in one of his old t-shirts, but he just couldn't find it in him to laugh. "All of those messages you sent me, the fact that you're following now, they say one thing and one thing only, Dean." Dean shrugged and inquired as to what Castiel meant by that. "That you don't trust me."

"Cas, man, I didn't mean to—"

"No, I know you didn't mean to, but..." He sighed. How could human beings put up with feeling like this all the time? Their endurance made them the true inheritors of Creation, but Castiel found it difficult to appreciate the theological point that his intellect had when every part of his body itched to do so many different things — hit Dean, kiss him, fight him... Castiel's hands twitched, curling into fists but otherwise staying still. "You thought that I was involved in some plot with Gabriel and Cupid. …Do you have any idea as to the full extent of what I have dealt with for your sake?"

"Well, yeah, you kind of made that point with your knee and a brick wall — not to mention the whole... hacking a banishing sigil into your chest thing."

"And yet you continue to act as though I will turn on you, or manipulate you as I used to do, or... or desert you at any given time, for no reason whatsoever—"

"You sure fucked off back to Heaven for no reason whatsoever—"

"Because you were going to Lisa's, Dean! Because you made Sam a promise to try and live like a normal human being — because you told him that you would leave well enough alone, and because you were in pain." The anger emanating off of Castiel started coming harder, faster — Dean could feel the heat of it from where he stood, and it wouldn't have surprised him if Cas had gone and burned the entire forest down. "Which is to say nothing of the fact that you all but told me to leave... And what kind of life would you have had if I'd stayed, initially? What kind of life would Ben and Lisa have had?"

"I would've had you, you stupid son of a bitch!"

There was a certain logic to that statement, one that made more sense than Dean's statements usually tended to. Castiel's nails started digging into his palm, and he was sure that he would draw blood eventually. "You didn't seem to want me," he pointed out. "But that much, I could forget and move on from. You are difficult, and insensitive, and as you say, you aren't exactly Mister Commitment, and you have an overinflated sense of your own cosmic importance coupled with one of the worst martyr complexes I have ever encountered, and I say this as someone who had to tell several early saints that they didn't need to get themselves killed — and all of that, I could put up with." He sighed as if breathing fire. "That, all of it, is what I love about you. ...But after last night—"

"Wait, what the Hell did I do last night—"

Rolling his eyes, Castiel parroted, in an exact mimicry of Dean's voice: "You were fucking lying to me this whole time, weren't you, Cas? ...Please. As though I care what Barachiel gets up to in his spare time, and worse, as though I would let him sway my emotions such as—"

"Yeah, well, it kind of tends to happen once Birthday Suit starts flitting around. And, come on, it's not exactly like you're a picture of emotional intelligence." Dean crossed his arms over his chest and grimaced.

"I lived for millennia without them! I was never meant to feel these things, and yet..." There came a flurry of rushing wings, one that stirred up the snow around them; it came down and resettled as though it hadn't been moved at all, and suddenly, Castiel was well infringing on Dean's personal space, craning his neck to get his face as close to Dean's as he could without kissing him. "And yet... I met you, and everything — literally everything that I had ever known — started changing. Not even the fact that I fell, or that I killed my brothers for the sake of your mission — everything that I thought I knew about myself stopped being as true as I thought it had been."

One of his hands came up to Dean's forehead. The hunter didn't even try to move, just shivered as Castiel ran his fingers down Dean's face, as the sensation of pure love rocketed throughout his body — the affection hit first, like warm soup hitting Dean's stomach; then came the passion and the desire, which made his heart race; the anger, the lust, the fear, the concern, the frustration, the gut-wrenching trust, the disappointment that was really more a fear that someone might be cracking around the edges, the willingness to overlook major character faults... Dean paled, felt his knees wobbling as though they couldn't manage supporting him when he was going to go having those kinds of emotions. They blazed through his chest, dropped his mind in the middle of the ocean and told it to swim or drown and put everyone out of its misery; the aftershock, when Cas's hand dropped to his neck and the circus of feelings subsided, was nausea, a sourceless fever, and a sudden preoccupation with whether or not Dean's heart would come up through his throat if he happened to sneeze. He swallowed thickly — this was probably the closest he'd been to having the flu since he'd been ten years old.

"...Do you feel that, Dean?" Castiel whispered. "...That is everything that you have ever done to me. From even before Cupid decided to involve himself. All of them weremine."

"...How the Hell do you put up with that kind of shit?" Dean balked. Even without shooting through all of those things that Cas had felt, Dean still felt as though he might collapse.

Castiel flexed his fingers. He splayed his palm across the back of Dean's neck and asked, "How do you?" Without another warning, he jerked Dean down into a kiss.

Since he'd had his first kiss at age eleven, Dean had kept a running mental tally of which ones were the best. Before the Apocalypse had failed to happen, the only one that Cas hadn't beaten was the one that Dean had shared while making his Crossroads Deal — kissing the Demon had felt like he was kissing an oil-covered penguin, but even when he and Cas's lips had met for the first time, Dean hadn't been able to regret the action that had brought Sam back to life. This collision, however, left that kiss in the dust: Castiel's entire mouth tasted like he'd made Dean feel, a forceful mixture of pure love and the other sensations that tended to follow at its heels — along his teeth, Dean tasted something soft and sugary; underneath his tongue, there was something more like Vindaloo curry, and when Castiel bit down on Dean's lower lip, even though Dean was certain he'd draw blood, it made him shudder as though he'd been thrust into a heat straight out of July in Texas. As one of his knees faltered against his will, bringing his heel up off the ground, Dean was fairly certain that some of the snow around them had started melting.

When Castiel knocked him to the ground, he was absolutely sure of it. The mud cushioned his fall, but Dean still noticed the lack of snow — the lack of anything even remotely cold where it should have been freezing. He didn't have much time to think about this, though: with a flick of the wrist, Castiel sent Dean hurtling toward the closest tree with the lowest-hanging branches, and in another rush of wings, the angel was on top of Dean. He reached into the pocket of Dean's old jeans and pulled out what looked like his old tie — "Where'd you find that?" Dean said, brow furrowing, nose wrinkling, and Cas-class bemusement encroaching on every part of him, from the facial expression to the way his shoulders slumped against the tree trunk. Meeting no resistance from the hunter, Castiel tore off his leather jacket, letting it settle behind Dean's back, and yanked off the two layers of shirts Dean wore underneath it.

"...No, seriously, Cas," Dean muttered, narrowing his eyes at the tie. "I thought that'd just up and disappeared... where'd you find it?"

"Does it matter?" Castiel asked — and as the angel positioned his arms above his head, bound them around the wrists and attached the ties to the tree, Dean had to suppose that, no, it didn't matter, not really. He tried to struggle against his makeshift handcuffs, just to test how secure or not they were, but this earned him Castiel's palm atop its imprint on Dean's shoulder; that contact already made Dean gasp, but when the angel's fingers clenched over the scar, that noise turned into a bone-deep moan. Sensations like fire and electric shocks went through his body, making his muscles twitch and convulse; every time Cas dug his nails into Dean's flesh, there came a worry over what would happen if the angel drew blood, which always found itself drowned out in a resonant, over-satisfied groan; and somewhere in the back of his mind, Dean was aware of the fact that this probably wasn't supposed to feel so good. But Cas kept fingering the mark, and waves of something — part pleasure, part pain, part different mixes of the emotional responses Cas had given him before — kept hitting Dean as deeply as they could, and when the angel finally withdrew his hand, its impression on Dean's skin was as scarlet as it had been on Dean's first day of coming back to life.

When Castiel's fingers cupped his jaw, Dean found them more tender than he'd expected, after the gripping and the grazing of nails against skin — and the kiss that Castiel bestowed on him was a cool breath of wind compared to the fevered panting that the previous one had been. The angel took it slow, massaging Dean's lips in long, thorough motions, and for all it didn't make sense at first, Dean trembled as the muscles in his back and shoulders twisted up, then released the tension they'd stored up since God only knew when. Each brush of lips on lips had enough space between their mouths for Dean to breathe, but he still felt his lungs start writhing as though they'd been deprived of air. Finally, Cas pulled back and gave him time to settle; Dean tried to smirk up at him, and the end result was more an intoxicated grin. "...Gotta say, the Metallica shirt looks good on you."

"Oh, does it." Castiel arched his eyebrows and let his trench-coat slip off his shoulders. It hit the ground, and the Metallica shirt followed close behind it. Underneath the pale rays of moonlight, the scars on Cas's chest shone bright enough for Dean to see everything around them. "I think that you might prefer me like this, though," Cas pointed out. He let his hands drop to Dean's thighs and took to rubbing them, slowly at first, and then harder, faster... Each time he found a spot that displeased him, he paused and worked it over until he got Dean moaning like this was the first time he'd had a massage. And maybe it wasn't — but it was the first time that a stroking session made him feel relief in the deepest part of his chest. It shot through him like getting stabbed, and once it hit his middle, twisted until his toes curled and his knees tried bending up, and when that sensation stopped, something warm and consoling spread out through his extremities.

Dean sat there, limp and still quivering, despite how much he wanted to do something — and when Cas kissed him another time, he tried to fight back against the lips that encroached on his own, to claim the angel's mouth instead of letting Cas claim his. This clash of mouths did not last long; Castiel withdrew just enough to put an end to it and caressed Dean's face. "You need to understand," he whispered, "just how much I trust you."

Another rush of feathers hit the air between them, and this time, Castiel didn't go anywhere; instead, two sets of wings erupted from his back. The feathers were white enough to make the snow look gray, and Castiel bent one close enough for Dean to finger it. "Take it," the angel said, brushing the tip against Dean's fingers — and Dean obliged. He snatched at the offered wing and, first, ran his thumb up and down the underside. Somehow, he'd thought that feathers would feel different — coarser, and not as comforting against his skin... but he couldn't stay focused on himself, not when Cas's cheeks and neck flushed a deep pink, not when the muscles of the angel's stomach started tensing up and shivering the way that Dean himself had done, not when an erection visibly strained against the front of the angel's jeans. Wrinkling his nose, Dean decided to get more creative: he slid his fingers down the feather with a calculated delay, getting as much as he could out of every centimeter of exposed feather — Cas's face twisted up so that Dean couldn't tell whether or not he enjoyed it; his breath started coming in shudders and ragged gasps — and then paused, just long enough to give Cas a shallow breath.

With an earnest smirk, Dean jerked his hand back up Cas's wing; the groan this earned him was that of an angel who'd kept his Urges pent up for far too long. He took a deep breath; his wings quivered. Tilting his hand away from the clutch of feathers, wriggling his wrists around just to feel the cool material of Cas's tie against his skin, Dean let his eyes drift down to Cas's waist. Another groan escaped the angel's lips — the majority of the ejaculate stained the front of his jeans, with some escaping onto the angel's skin, creating a messy constellation on his stomach — and the wings disappeared into his back again. In a warm, swooning sigh, he let himself drop onto Dean's shoulder. One hand wrapped around the other, giving him enough support to stay up — and not a moment later, a deep breath apparently gave Cas enough stamina to start kissing the pulse point above Dean's jugular vein. He started slowly again — gently, but it seemed to be more for his sake than for Dean's; soon enough, he sucked on the skin, and Dean felt the gnashing of his teeth down into his lungs; fucking angels and their ability to send sensations where they didn't necessarily belong.

Dean thought that he might moan again, but instead of that noise, he choked out a smaller, more vulnerable one. Cas breathed on the work of his mouth, the wet, red spot that, in the morning, would be an enormous bruise; the warmth went all the way down to Dean's stomach. He sat up again, with just a brush of his fingertips over Dean's clavicle. Something, Dean wasn't sure what, glinted behind Castiel's eyes, and he reached back into his coat; when his hand returned, he'd wrapped it around the hilt of his angelic knife. Sword, or whatever the winged ass-monkeys wanted to call it. "That is something no one else has ever done for me," he explained, as though he hadn't just come all over himself, as though there weren't already another erection lurking underneath the previous one's remains. "No one, Dean... even I haven't done that for myself, because playing with an angel's wings could cripple him. Only your hands have touched mine... because you're special to me. And I have to wonder..."

He pressed the flat edge of his knife into the same spot on Dean's neck, the one he'd worked over with a kiss. Underneath the freezing metal, Dean shook; he felt his toes curl again, just when he'd thought that maybe he'd get out of having that happen again. "My sword can kill demons, angels, humans..." Cas continued, eyes darkened with yearning. "Do you trust me with a tool that could end you without any extra effort on my part?" Dean nodded; Cas rewarded him with a pensive hum. He tilted his weapon, so that the blade pressed into Dean's neck. "You know... I'm not sure that I believe you."

He dragged the blade over his handiwork, not even cutting deeply, but pressing it into Dean's skin enough to draw blood; Dean wrinkled his nose and squirmed, which made Cas roll his eyes and mutter something in Enochian. The next place that the blade hit him was his clavicle. Cas brushed the flat edge up and down the jutting angles of Dean's bone — leaning in again, he gave Dean a slow, delicate kiss — and while he had Dean's mind preoccupied with the acton at his lips, he sliced a long (but shallow) line down the space between Dean's throat and his heart. Cas next attacked Dean's button and his fly, hacking off the fastening and nudging the zipper down with his knife and not his fingers. He yanked down Dean's jeans and boxers, let them bunch up around his knees and repeated the process with his own confinements — and briefly, but long enough for Dean to notice, he let his knife stray toward Dean's erect cock.

Dean didn't react at all. Even when the flat edge pressed into the underside of his shaft, all he did was smile up at the angel, as though daring him to go one step further. Castiel dropped the knife; the hand that had held it snaked behind Dean's neck and nudged him up into another kiss. When they separated, he licked his index, middle, and ring fingers; one-by-one, he slid them into Dean's hole; the middle waited by itself, idly rubbing at Dean's prostate. With his head tilted in amusement, rather than its signature confusion, Castiel watched Dean biting on his lower lip, trying not to let the angel know just how much he was enjoying this, and how much he needed it to go one step further — Castiel smiled, and obliged. He wrapped his clean hand around Dean's shaft and shoved his own member where his fingers had been; Dean gasped, initially, and retaliated by grinding his hips into Castiel's. The angel fought back, bucking Dean back into the ground and nailing him there, plumbing deeper, and harder — he kept his motions within Dean polite enough to avoid hurting him, but as he quickened the pace of his hand on Dean's dick, so he sped up the rocking of their hips, and the rubbing of his head into Dean's prostate.

Castiel climaxed first, he made sure of it — and, sliding out, he brought Dean to it with a flick of his wrist. In a shudder and a groan came on Castiel's hand, then fell limp on the tree. Castiel snapped his fingers, undoing the bonds with a hit of magic, and despite the chill that rolled in around them, his wings kept both him and his lover warm until they were ready to rejoin the group.


	14. Epilogue: A Thousand Kisses Deep

Despite her best attempts at enforcing a 'no pictures until after I've slept' policy in her delivery room, Becky looked up just in time to give Barnes an exhausted, woozy smile. The camera flashed, and in her mother's arms, little Ashley Joanna Beth Winchester Braeden-Rosen-Shurley gurgled, whined, and wriggled around. She'd been born barely six hours into Valentine's Day, and although Damien continued to insist that Vendetta Valentine Braeden-Rosen-Shurley would've been the most badass name that a baby Jesus hunter could have, he agreed with Becky's assessment that she was the best of all possible babies.

"All possible girl babies," Lisa qualified, giving Damien an arched eyebrow as she stroked a piece of hair behind Becky's ear. "Ben has the title for boy babies." With a smile toward her son, she added, "And now he's going to be the best of all possible older brothers."

Ben waited a while before coming over to peer at the baby. Really, he didn't see what the big deal was. Even factoring in all the things Dad, Uncle Sam, Uncle Barnes, Uncle Damien, and Weird Uncle Cas got up to, how hard could it be to look after some tiny red-faced thing that screamed a lot? It couldn't have been any more difficult than explaining the fact that only one of his "uncles" was actually related to him, but all of them had to pretend to be, just in case someone at school had to ask why Mom or Becky wasn't there to pick him up.

Dean, Sam, and Castiel showed up around noon, and no doubt due to Sam's influence, had had the foresight to clean off the remnants of their last hunt. It was a very strange sight, Becky thought, watching Dean Winchester hold a baby and joke that, since Castiel was only temporarily inhabiting some guy's body, they could go and have one of their own. Well, strange and beautiful, really. That was the only way to explain her loud, "Awwwww" and the grin that refused to leave her face.

Castiel arched an eyebrow at Dean and began explaining how, actually, no, it wouldn't be quite that simple. "The creation of a nephil is very tricky business, and I believe that the only known examples of them happened in a case like Belial's — angels inhabiting male vessels and defiling themselves with human women. To do it... well, first, we would need more space than the Impala. Probably more space than even Bobby's house has. Anna fell pregnant while taking a vessel once, and Uriel and I had an immense amount of difficulty finding somewhere the humans wouldn't notice anything."

Dean's brow furrowed as though Cas was asking him to understand calculus in Ancient Greek. "Wait... who the Hell knocked Anna up?"

"Anchises of Dardania," Castiel explained with a shrug. "The Romans were right about their founder-hero Aeneas having divine parentage; they simply misunderstood the nature of it." Noticing the room full of bemused expressions — aside from Barnes, who'd majored in global mythologies — Castiel added, "...It is another term for Troy. ...Aeneas was a lieutenant under Hector, who escaped the Grecian destruction of his homeland and went on to settle Alba Longa, and his descendants, Romulus and Remus, would later establish the—"

Dean silenced his angel with a deep kiss, and Sam wandered out into the hallway without excusing himself. ...Which, really, was just as well for Gabriel, who pounced the taller Winchester as he rounded a corner. Sam had harbored notions of going down to the cafeteria, but getting an armful of archangel seemed like a better plan.

"So, I've been thinking, babe," Gabriel said with a wicked grin. "How about me and you go have a little quality time—"

"That sounds like an excellent—"

"With Bela."

Sam looked like a lost kitten. Gabriel waggled his eyebrows. And in a motel room about five miles away from the hospital, Bela waited, wearing fishnet stockings with a garter belt, and a pretty brunette with glasses and a streak of pink tucked behind her ear.

Zachariah didn't really like peeking into the goings on down on Earth — he'd deemed humanity 'beneath him' following Azazel's siring of Belial and subsequent rebellion, after he'd been promoted from the Grigori to middle management — but, well... sometimes, you just had to make exceptions. Sometimes, Dean Winchester was being an impossible pain in the ass and refusing to accept his destiny. Sometimes, humanity on the whole decided that it'd been a while since they'd had a nice war and Zachariah needed to tune in just to have a chuckle about how many of them died over trifling issues that, really, they never resolved anyway. (It was cosmic irony — his favorite kind.) And sometimes, an over-excitable young woman was giving birth to your Father's latest direct offspring with everything, for once, appearing to go exactly to plan.

Granted, Zachariah had done absolutely nothing to ensure that things had gone exactly to plan, but even so, as he dismissed the vision of Rebecca Rosen's hospital room, he leaned back, put his feet up on his desk, and smiled. It didn't last long, as the process made his face ache, but the occasion was a special one, he thought, so it only made sense to acknowledge that somewhat. And, whatever Earth had going on, he had time off from putting up with Castiel, Gabriel, and Cupid. That made the pain worthwhile.

Barachiel had not discovered the joys of anger management, but his Christmas present from Suriel had been a set of action figures shaped like Sam, Dean, Cas, Gabriel, Becky, Lisa, Crowley, and Bela, and playing with them had turned out to be more than enough outlet for him. As much as he'd wanted to go and visit Becky in the hospital, Suriel had stopped him on his way down, pointing out that if he went intangibly, then he wouldn't be able to give anybody hugs, but that if he went down in his favorite form, he'd need to wear pants or else some people would probably complain.

Barachiel didn't understand pants. They were so confining. And uncomfortable. But playing Tea Party with Becky, Bela, and Crowley made a good distraction from the fact that he couldn't go and squeal over the new baby. Bela-action figure had on a slinky black dress that Crowley-action figure really liked, but wasn't going to touch because Suriel hadpromised that Barachiel could have an action figure of Bobby for his feast day on the twenty-seventh, and Crowley-action figure might have been a demon, but he wasn't going to cheat on his precious Bobbykins with one of the Crossroads Demons in his employ.

"You know, there's just one thing about this whole debacle that I can't quite figure out." Barachiel looked up into Israfel's calm eyes and gave his brother his best look wide-eyed, who, me? couldn't be surprise. Israfel chuckled, and it sounded like a wind-chime on a warm summer day. "Gabriel might be reckless, brother, but he wouldn't plan his own kidnapping — especially not in order to make Dean Winchester and Castiel to sleep together."

He arched an eyebrow at his little brother and, suddenly, a guilty blush and a terrified frown replaced Barachiel's innocent expression. "Please, please, please don't tell on me Izzy?" he begged.

Israfel shrugged. "Why would I tattle on you — and to whom? You did a good thing, insofar as I'm concerned."

"I don't know... Gabey would get kind of upset if he knew that I planned getting him kidnapped. And you know what he's like when he's upset — think about the Library of Alexandria and—"

"Wait, you set that up from the beginning?" Barachiel nodded; Israfel pursed his lips. "Huh. I thought that you'd just gotten very lucky in how you played your cards."

"Oh, no, I mean... Dean and Castiel sort of needed to work out some underlying trust issues, and then I thought that Gabriel needed to learn a lesson because he kept denying how in love Finn and Rachel are—"

"Who are Finn and Rachel?"

Barachiel waved his hand dismissively. "It's a long story, Izzy — and anyway, I'm just happy that things worked out for everyone just like I wanted them to."

"Intriguing." Israfel ran his hand back through his hair, which still needed a cutting, and gave Barachiel an affectionate smile. "So. What are you going to do with yourself now that your schemes have played themselves out?"

Barachiel grinned, and wiggled his nose. With a ting noise, a sprig of mistletoe appeared above their heads. As he stood, he cooed, "Weeeeell... I was kind of hoping to get a 'job well done' kiss from someone?" For added effect, he fluttered his eyelashes.

Israfel glanced up at the plant and sighed. "It's February, Barachiel. Humans generally limit their use of mistletoe to December."

Barachiel pouted, and drawled, "Soooooo?"

Well, Israfel had heard worse excuses for logic, and kissing him made Barachiel ooze happiness, so, really... was there any harm in it? The angel of music certainly didn't think so.

Around three that afternoon, a phone call from Bobby sent Dean and Castiel down the hospital stairs, heading for the Impala. Apparently, a nest of vampires had gone mad two states over, and since Bobby and Crowley were "hung up" — Dean didn't even want to consider what the Hell they meant by that — they couldn't go to handle it. Castiel didn't seem to mind. Judging by the glint in his eyes, Dean would've even guessed that his angel was excited about beheading some blood-sucking freaks.

"You know I was just kidding up there, right?" Dean said as he started the car. Castiel gave him a bemused tilt of his head. "...About the... nephil. Or the baby crap, or whatever." Neither spoke as Dean pulled his baby out of her parking space, then the lot, then onto the road. "...I mean. It's not a commitment thing or whatever, I just. ...We don't have to go rush out and knock you up or anything."

Finally picking up on Dean's intention, Castiel nodded. "I know that you wouldn't force something like this on us before we're ready for it, should that ever come. I was merely pointing out the complicated logistics that such a thing would require considering."

They rolled up to a red light, and with a chuckle, Dean reached over to muss up Castiel's hair. "You want anything from the drive-through before we hit the road?"

Castiel shook his head and retrieved a cassette from the glove-box. "I would like to listen to this, however." An inscrutable smile crossed his lips as the Zeppelin mix tape started blasting "Houses of the Holy." Dean smirked; he'd taught his angel well.

On the day of Ashley Joanna Beth Winchester Braeden-Rosen-Shurley's birth, the Host of Heaven all celebrated in their own particular ways — and, indeed, the only place that wasn't full up of joyful sounds was the center of The Garden. Sitting by Himself, He tended to a clutch of His favorite azaleas, changing the colors on their petals until, finally, He settled for an unnaturally deep blue. For all He knew that He ought to have ventured out and seen His children on their day of festivities — or at least tried to go and see Becky and their baby — doing so just didn't seem like a good idea. He sighed, running His fingers up a seedling's stalk, causing it to grow and flower into full bloom. Technically, He supposed that they were Chuck's fingers, but, either way, He was still by Himself.

His true name was Malkhut, and He was more than accustomed to isolation. Life as an aspect of the Divine entity collectively called God got to be a lonely one, especially when Your fellow aspects had no reliable schedule for when they would be available. Yesod had been bumming around India since the British Raj, Binah and Chokhmah still hadn't returned from a "short jaunt" they'd felt like taking to Tralfamadore, Gevurah had gone off and taken up a gig as the security chief at the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, and as for the others... well, He didn't know about the others. He just knew that, even if He didn't think that going back down to Earth in Chuck's visage — let alone paying Becky a visit — was a good idea, He could always tend to His flowers.

"It's not wrong for You to miss her, Father." He didn't even need to turn His head around; He knew Joshua's voice better than any of His other children's, and He knew the way that Joshua's feet sounded on the cobblestones. "That's what you told me about Magdalene, if memory serves."

He sighed. "There's a huge difference between you and Magdalene and me and Becky, Yeshua. Like... Lucifer's pride meets Michael's ego huge."

Joshua chuckled, and came closer, but never presumed to come and view his Father's face. "So You've said."

"I just... I don't like going and hiding from everybody, but... I really like using Chuck as my avatar on Earth. He's different than the others... He doesn't make too much out of sharing a consciousness, or the fact that sometimes, we need to go and perform a miracle, or... anything, really." Screwing up His face, he picked up a nearby pebble and hurled it down the path. It bounced off the cobblestones and rolled into a patch of dirt. "And then there's Becky... She did anything we asked her to, she did more — she believed everything with only the rare question, and she..."

"And You love her." His eyes started watering as He turned His head and looked up to His begotten son; He nodded. "You didn't need to confirm it, Father. I've known since You returned."

"And you wouldn't hold it against me for going back." Joshua shook his head, and offered that, if it helped, going back would mean that He didn't leave another Virgin Mother to raise her child without any kind of instruction manual on handling a half-divine offspring; He sighed. "Only problem is... I don't even know where to start explaining everything to her."

Joshua smiled. "It's difficult, but the truth is usually the most constructive option."

He snuffled. The truth had always given Him difficulty.

Chuck Shurley came to his senses in the middle of the hospital cafeteria, at the far end of a long table, looking for all intents and purposes as though he'd fallen asleep next to a plate of suspicious looking macaroni. No one bothered asking who he was, and most of his fellow patrons tried to avoid his gaze as he staggered out into the corridor. He shared an elevator with a surgical intern, who gave him a look of commiseration aimed at Chuck's pallor and sensitivity to light — he didn't even remember how he'd gotten there, just that he needed to see Becky and tell her something important, and that his head throbbed like the worst hangover he'd ever had in his life.

He paused outside of Becky's room, just watching her and Lisa Braeden cuddling on the bed, and cooing over little Ashley. Now that he was here, this seemed like an increasingly worse idea, but he rapped on the doorframe anyway. When Becky gasped his name, he nodded and forced himself to meet her gaze; she looked like she'd just seen a ghost, and Lisa's expression said so this is the great Carver Edlund? Jesus, he's short.

"Yeah, I... Hi, Becky," he managed, with a smile that looked more like a grimace. "Lisa."

"Do you two want a minute alone?" Lisa asked, and moved to stand.

Chuck shook his head and muttered that really, it was fine, probably better if she and Ben stayed to hear this. He started into another train of thought, but Becky cut him off: "Where did you go, Chuck? We all thought you were dead!"

"No, no, I... it wasn't anything like that, I." He took a moment to consider this. The truth was the best option, and he knew that — he could hear Joshua's voice in the back of his skull, reminding him of this fact — but finding a starting point proved difficult, considering just how complicated the truth was. "It's a long story, and I promise, I'll tell you all of it... but there's something more important to talk about first. ...About Ashley."

"She's going to be okay, right?" Lisa said.

"Oh yeah, she's going to be fine, just... Sorry. I'll get telling you sort of... more directly now."

At the end of their conversation, after they'd heard about Ashley's destiny and Chuck's true nature, Becky and Lisa invited him to stay and help raise his daughter. His face broke out into the first genuine smile he'd worn in over a year. Barnes and Damien popped their heads in not ten seconds later, squealing with delight at everything they'd overheard, and Ben briefly glanced up from his PSP to agree that everything sounded "pretty awesome." Truly, it was the beginning of a beautiful (if highly unorthodox) little family.

There was a reverence to how Castiel admired Dean's endurance, and only the sounds of Robert Plant's voice and Jimmy Page's guitar kept it from being appropriately silent. They'd been driving for three hours and hadn't needed to pull over once. The open road stretched out ahead of them, and the Impala's engine purred so sweetly that even Castiel's delicate, angelic sensibilities could appreciate it. Smiling beatifically, the angel turned up "Travelling Riverside Blues" and handed Dean a Twizzler from the pack. When they came to the next stop sign, Dean waited a while longer than he needed to — Castiel arched an eyebrow when he stopped at all.

"Dean," he pointed out, "there's no one else on the road."

Dean nodded, and swallowed his current bite of licorice. "Yeah, I know." He leaned over toward his angel and whispered, "but I've got something for you."

The kiss, Castiel expected, but he made a warm noise of surprise as the candy's taste filled his mouth. Carcinogens, Castiel thought as Dean put his foot back on the accelerator, might not have been so terrible after all.


End file.
